Letters
Red Cross chapter thanks volunteers for ‘time, energy and spirit’

As Thanksgiving approaches, family and friends will gather to give thanks for their good fortune over the past year.

The Jersey Coast Chapter of the American Red Cross gives thanks to our volunteers who so generously give their time, energy and spirit and to our financial donors who enable us to effectively carry out our mission to provide relief to victims of disasters and help people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies.

Thousands of volunteers and members of our community have given their energy, talent and generosity over the past year to help those in need. As a result, your Jersey Coast Chapter was able to provide disaster relief to 238 victims in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

With your donated time, we taught more than 40,000 members of your community life-saving skills such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), first aid, and automated external defibrillator (AED) training. We also taught your children how to swim, educated your neighbors about disaster preparedness, and provided worldwide emergency communications for local military personnel and their families. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf states, almost 900 residents of Monmouth and Ocean counties were trained to help the disaster victims. Eighty-one have been deployed to the Gulf states and 17 to Florida after Hurricane Wilma made landfall.

These vital services would not have been possible without the valuable contributions of our financial donors. Together, our volunteers and donors are the heart and soul of the American Red Cross. You turn America’s caring and concern for the victims of disaster into immediate action.

Whether the disaster is a single-family fire or a highly publicized hurricane, flood or act of terrorism, we thank our volunteers and donors who stand ready to provide vital relief services to our community. It is your continuous commitment to providing warmth and support to other members of our community for which we at the Jersey Coast Chapter are so thankful.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, and know that you have truly made a positive difference this year.

Bill Murray

Jersey Coast Chapter

American Red Cross

Tinton Falls

Residents do not want deer hunt

The English enclosure laws of the 16th century divested tenured peasants of their land and enabled large landowners to create deer parks where they could shoot semitame deer on what used to be public lands. One might have thought all this was history. But the majority (elected by a minority) of freeholders and the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife (elected by nobody) want another deer hunt this year.

Most Monmouth County residents do not want a deer hunt and when residents unfamiliar with the park system’s deer management plan learn about it, most of them are against it. The New Jersey Supreme Court stated last year that New Jersey black bears belong to the people of New Jersey.

Then let the people be heard, and their will heeded. And that goes not only for the cancellation of the deer hunt and the proposed bear hunt but for an end to overdevelopment, the construction of megabox stores, the continuing obliteration of open space, the eradication of wildlife, and mass congestion on the roadways — all evidence, among other things, that the effects of the enclosure laws continue unabated to the present day in New Jersey, as elsewhere.

Louis Novellino

Middletown

Reader makes appeal to switch to biofuels

In the absence of a leader to stand before us, as John Kennedy once did, and proclaim that before this decade is out we in America will evolve from a petroleum-based economy and into an economy based on alternative fuel sources, I believe the threshold of pain for a family’s budget will be reached when the price at the pump is $5 per gallon. And, only then will real change come about. Until that time, we can expect the American economy to be dictated by the price of foreign oil with little control over the terms and conditions of that market.

This can change, however. We could create a new market today in which we in America could control the terms and conditions and ultimately win back the control of our own economy. Through biotechnology and the use of biofuel products — industrial products made from renewable resources rather than finite petroleum supplies — we could reduce immediately and eventually eliminate our dependency on foreign oil.

Biotechnology is used to develop biobased products from vegetable oil, animal fat and animal waste for alternative fuel sources. It is the “x factor” in the recycling process. It is analogous to the “woman who swallowed the spider to catch the fly.” In this case, the farmer grows the corn, the corn feeds a cow. The cow produces waste. The waste — rather than contributing to waste runoff — is captured.

The captured waste is heated in a container to produce methane gas. The methane gas fuels the turbine engine. The turbine engine produces energy. The energy produces electricity. The electricity supports the farm which grows the corn to feed that cow that produces the waste. The farm animal waste which would have ended the process and which would have contributed to a waste runoff problem, through biotechnology, can now be recycled into a productive solution that resolves one problem and contributes to the success of another.

The same process can be applied to tackle the problem associated with the disposal of cooking oil after it has been used. The oil waste can be collected and recycled to produce biodiesel fuel. Replacing petroleum diesel — which is a major contributor to global warming — with a biodiesel product can reduce carbon dioxide emissions as well as fine particle pollution that contribute to diesel-related health risks. While politicians lobby to increase taxes to install pollution controls on diesel engines to reduce pollution, more consideration ought to be given to the replacement of the product that causes these risks.

Corn is abundant in America and is also a renewable resource, which makes it a natural choice as a fuel source. Corn can be turned into ethanol and used as an alcohol-based fuel product. Besides corn, scientists are looking into alfalfa and switch grass, which grows in the native prairie, to produce ethanol. Combining ethanol with gasoline lifts the octane level and makes a cleaner-burning fuel which significantly reduces tailgate emissions of unburned hydrocarbons that contribute to smog and ozone.

By using alternative fuel solutions that are currently available, we can begin to reduce our demand for foreign oil today and reduce the leverage that will be placed on us by a foreign oil-producing country tomorrow, notwithstanding having a cleaner environment along the way.

We do not have to wait until the price at the pump reaches $5 per gallon to make this change. In America, we could make a commitment to withdraw our dependency from foreign oil and migrate to an alternative fuel source that is available for use today.

Patrick Short

Middletown

Belford resident urges public to oppose application

Since the chairman of the Zoning Board explained to those of us present at the Oct. 24 meeting that all applications must be heard, and the burden of proof is on the applicant to prove why their application is beneficial to Belford residents, we certainly hope our concerns will be evaluated in the same manner as applicants who have the advantage of many paid experts.

Many of us who have lived here more than 20 or 30 years are concerned about the impact of allowing retail and warehouse distribution in a heavily populated residential area with two schools in such close proximity. Those of us who have lived here for many years, like ourselves, know JCP&L was very quiet, with bucket trucks doing one exit in the morning and one return at night.

While the facility was technically open 24/7, it was only during storms or severe accidents that trucks would exit at night. This was understandable and a necessary service. This application for a retail store and warehouse distribution center is not — in any imagination — similar or a necessary service. And while we are being told now it is a small operation, the owner himself says he has grown significantly and needs a larger space, so one would think this continued expansion is what to expect.

We ask the Zoning Board to contemplate the significance of this decision on the quality-of-life issues those of us living on top of this property will be faced with and the possibility of the impact of future businesses that could go there if this property is rezoned as commercial.

Belford residents come join your neighbors at the Nov. 28 meeting at 7 p.m. at town hall and be counted as a vote against changing our area with further commercial development. Remember this could happen in your immediate neighborhood next. For further information, call the Zoning Office at (732) 615-2102.

Cathy and Robert Mustaciuolo

Belford section

of Middletown