Susquehanna-Roseland...sounds like a local version of "Dancing With The Stars". We love to see our favorite personalities in situations out of character, challenged and doing well, as they vie for our calls to come back for another show. I am hoping today that you will phone in your feelings on Susquehanna-Roseland so we can see our New Jersey power brokers dance to a new tune.
When Governor Christie's transition team made its recommendations to the incoming administration earlier this year, endorsements included backing the PSE&G Susquehanna-Roseland project. Of course, the expertise of PSE&G President Ralph Larossa as a member of the team contributed to this biased overall view of New Jersey's priorities....but it stinks to high heaven that this giant power line dinosaur is going to smash its footprints over mountains and watershed of Northwest New Jersey.
New Jersey is the country's most populated state. We have more people and more horses per square mile than anyone else in the fifty states. This should imply that we treasure that balance of humans and wilderness that have made us so unique. If you were take Rt. 80 west to the Delaware Water Gap, the highway drops down to the Old Copper Mine Road. You have to wait for the stop light to go to green because the one lane road hugs dripping fern-studded slopes of the steep river bank. You are now in the Federal Recreation Area, dating back to the fifties, when local residents were driven from their lands (some homesteads dating back to the 1600's) for the controversial Tocks Island Dam. That dam was eventually considered to be a bad idea but the Government kept the land anyway. About 7 miles later you come into Milbrook Village, nestled at the foot of two mountains, left to birch clusters of Flatbrookville, and right at the rhodendrons up the hill to Blairstown.
This is the beginning of the gigantic power line project. It comes in from Pennsylvania, where contracts have already been let to Valmont Industries to make the steel portions of the towers. I looked up the construction implication for these projects and it looks like each tower will require a twenty to forty foot concrete base . Can you picture a concrete delivery truck, with its revolving drum loaded with its sloshing load, climbing up these mountains? Well, the power companies blast and tear out gouges of mountain and make thoroughfares up, up, up to where they can safely unload. And then the 195 foot towers will be placed atop these piers. The tallest proposed tower will be 240 feet high at Lake Denmark, as per a March 28 article in NJ.com by Mark DiIonno.
PSE&G tower building is not for the faint of heart. The PSE&G website, under frequently asked questions, states that "electric and magnetic fields are present wherever there is a flow of electric current, whether in wires in the home, electrical appliances, or power lines. Electric fields are produced by the voltage or electrical pressure in a wire and are present even if an appliance is turned off, as long as it is connected to a source of electric power. Magnetic fields are produced whenever there is a flow of electric current through a wire." Present PS&G towers range from 65 to 80 feet high and carry 230 kilovolts. The new towers will carry 500 kilovolts and that could be why they have to be so high.
What they don't tell you is that there is statistical evidence that seems to link electromagnetic fields to leukemia, brain tumors, colon and breast cancer. When I had my real estate license I found that properties under or near power lines were not as attractive to buyers as those some distance away. If the towers are built they will need to be maintained. The access roads to keep the underbrush trimmed and the towers groomed will be invitations to Homeland Security risk as well as blights in the wilderness. These roads and towers will be all you see when you gaze out at what used to be lakes and green forests of our Garden State.
Let's stop this now. Please call or write your legislators now. After all, the monies for this boondoogle are coming right out of your power bill.
Have a good day.
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