What Was That Shaking?
Also in local news: Breton Woods avoids development.
For the second time this month, residents along the Jersey Shore reported an unexplainable shaking and rumbling in the ground. Two weeks ago — on January 13th — residents from Cape May to Manahawkin reported similar rumblings in the ground. At the time, media reports said a supersonic military airplane might have been the cause of the rumbling. This week, a U.S. Naval air station based in St. Mary’s County, Maryland announced it would be conducting test events that could generate noise but residents say yesterday’s noises came from the ground and not the sky.
Looks like that Breton Woods land in Brick may have been saved from development. 32 acres owned by the Catholic Church on Mantoloking Road had been sold off to a developer, but residents in the area weren’t having it. Under the agreement, the developer accepted an eight-and-a-half million dollar offer from Brick Township and Ocean County. Final approval by the Board of Commissioners will follow a public hearing on the plan March first.
That Save Barnegat Bay public meeting on the topic of the deal to turn the Ciba-Geigy land into a public nature preserve happened yesterday. Residents have told the state’s Department of Environmental Protection they want more input and greater transparency in the Toms River Superfund site plan. It’s now the state’s turn to respond. The group Save Barnegat Bay was also involved in the successful fight to preserve Breton Woods.
An Ocean County high school student’s research in the protection of honeybees has caught the attention of the national news media. Toms River High School North junior Kaitlyn Culbert has been studying how to reverse the decline of honey bee colonies nationwide in recent years. She says a species of mite is the greatest factor in the decline of the colonies. Her work won last year’s Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award and she has been interviewed on CBS.
New Jersey health officials have received 80-and-a-half million dollars from the CDC to strengthen the state’s healthcare workforce and update their data systems. State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli says the grant is a chance for New Jersey to strengthen its public health infrastructure and improve the training of its healthcare workforce. The beginning of the pandemic proved that decades in health department cuts left people vulnerable.
