Letters

More than a word of thanks goes to Mayor Scarpelli for the billboard alerting passersby to the underreported crime of Elder Abuse. The sign erected on township property on Chambers Bridge Road is the first of its kind in Ocean County.

The Zonta Club of Ocean County Task Force on Elder Abuse earlier requested the cooperation of Mayor Scarpelli in its efforts to heighten awareness of the crime of elder abuse whether verbal or physical abuse or neglect as well as exploitation. The task force makes the public aware of the help readily available to victims. In addition to the phone numbers on the billboard - 911 in case of immediate danger and (732) 244-8259 (Providence House of Catholic Charities) - victims of abuse can call Contact of Ocean County, a 24-hour crisis intervention hotline, at (732) 240-6100 .

For information and referrals to community services, call 2-1-1, a service provided by Contact in conjunction with United Way of Ocean County. Brochures detailing additional services represented on the task force are available at The County Connection in the Ocean County Mall, Toms River.

Loretta Cody

Brick

chairwoman

Task Force on Elder Abuse

Resident: 'We're filthy people'

After reading an editorial opinion about the condition of Evergreen Woods ("Time for serious spring cleaning at Evergreen Woods Park," March 23), I was prompted to write my own letter to all the residents of Brick Township - or as my late friend called it, "Ick Town."

We're filthy people.

Look around. Routes 70 and 88 are littered from end to end - Herbertsville, Midstreams, Mantoloking, Riviera, etc. Is this Bricktucky (Another fun name for this town)?

This is where we pay our taxes and where our children are growing up and going to school; where mom and dad live in their retirement communities; where we should all be taking pride in what we are paying for.

We all seem indifferent to the fact that wherever you look, there's trash and litter, plastic bags in trees, cardboard boxes on the side of the roads, garbage everywhere.

What makes a town look poor and inefficient more than garbage and litter in its streets?

The surrounding towns - Point Pleasant, Brielle Manasquan - don't look like Brick. They have clean streets.

Are our newly re-elected mayor and township council members looking the other way? Where's the pride? Where are the township clean-up crews and the county and state crews?

Even this newspaper and the other two small papers here are at fault. These newspapers are everywhere - on roadsides, in the streets, in the wooded areas just laying around getting wet and run over and becoming trash.

Is this our town's reputation? Are we raising kids who don't care about their community?

We should all take a minute and take some pride in this town and in ourselves. Pick up this trash and stop throwing it out of our car windows (especially at stop signs and lights) and keep our yards clean and just plain get our act together.

It's just as easy to live in a clean town as it is to live in a dirty one; the difference is pride.

We are all citizens of this town, we all live here together and we all have to take responsibility for making this mess.

We can stop it, we can clean it up and we can have pride in Bricktown - our home.

M.J. Fletcher

Brick

Recycle nuclear waste, resident urges

It's becoming evident to me that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will grant Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station its 20-year operating license extension.

The main objective of the nuclear industry is to protect people and the environment. Continued improvements must be made. Nuclear power industry is the only energy producing technology which takes full responsibility for all of its wastes.

The costs of managing and disposing of nuclear radwaste is calculated into the process. Nuclear energy is far more cost effective and produces a very small amount of waste when compared to fossil fuel electrical generation.

One issue of great concern is the storage of the highest level of radiological waste, namely the spent fuel rods. They are being stored at Oyster Creek as well as at every nuclear reactor in the country. Although permanent storage for nuclear waste is planned by the U.S. Government at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, protests and other delays could postpone its anticipated 2012 opening.

The radioactivity of all nuclear waste decays with time. All radwaste has what is called a half-life, the time it takes for half of its radioactive atoms to decay. After 40-50 years, the spent fuel rods' radioactivity has fallen to only one thousandth of the radioactive level during removal from the reactor therefore, the spent fuel still contains highly radioactive isotopes that are processed as high radwaste. They should be treated as a valuable fuel source.

In France, China, Japan, India, Russia, Germany and the United Kingdom, they recover and recycle spent fuels into new usable fuel rods and reduce the volume of nuclear waste by introducing less uranium. In America, it should be mandated that spent fuel rods be reprocessed before being encapsulated in Pyrex glass and stainless steel containers and considered unequivocally "waste."

A facility can be constructed at Oyster Creek and at many of the nuclear reactors throughout the United States to achieve this goal of reprocessing, thus reducing the amount of spent fuel to be transported to Yucca Mountain. It would behoove the federal government to help fund such an effort.

We seem to be falling behind in the world of technology and with our infrastructure. If you're not the lead dog, the view is always the same.

John McKelvey

Brick