Advance Robbinsville
NOVEMBER 2019
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Your vote at risk
COMMUNITYNEWS.ORG
Operation algae
Dancing queens
Most New Jersey voting machines are stuck in the past
West Town Center Lake treated for build-up after warm summer
By RoB aNthes
ranthes@communitynews.org
By saMaNtha sciaRRotta
In 2004, Hopewell resident Stephanie Harris went to her polling place for the presidential primary, never expecting what was about to happen would alter her life and the public discourse around voter security for the next decade and a half. When Harris entered the privacy booth that day, she saw one of Mercer County’s then-new touchscreen voting machines facing her, a model called the Sequoia AVC Advantage. She found her candidate of choice on the large paper ballot overlay, pressed the box next to the candidate’s name and then hit a large button at the bottom right of the machine to cast her vote. Typically, at this point, the AVC Advantage will make a noise to indicate a vote has been counted. For Harris, nothing happened. Harris exited the privacy booth slightly confused. A poll worker stopped her, and said her vote didn’t register and that she should try again. Harris did, four times with the same results. After the fi fth time, the poll worker shrugged, and said, “Well, I think it worked.” Harris never received definitive confirmation her vote had been cast. To this day, she doesn’t know whether the machine recorded her vote. Harris couldn’t shake the feeling that her vote had been taken away. She asked the county for confirmation or at least an explaSee VOTING, Page 15
Algal blooms saw an increase all over the state this summer— Robbinsville included. West Town Center Lake recently underwent treatment after months of excessive algae build-up due to conditions like elevated levels of nutrients, warmer water and heavy rains that washed chemical runoff from nearby treated lawns and animal waste into the lake. Black Lagoon Pond Management, a Bordentownbased company, administered the treatment. “This year, there has been a big problem with the overabundance of algae not only in our lakes, but around the state,” said Chris Rupp, Robbinsville’s director of public works. “It was a daily news clip on most media stations, talking about how dangerous the algae was to people and animals.” Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey’s largest freshwater body, made headlines after it was forced to close for most of the summer due to excessive algae. It was just one of the bodies of water across the east coast that suffered from the issue. The prominence of excessive algae in New Jersey was reported on by outlets like The New York Times. Many See LAKE, Page 9
ssciarrotta@communitynews.org
Vedika Mulay, Aashmi Mathhew, Alisha Kulkarni, Shriya Patel, Shrima Patel, Allana John and Mahika Mulay perform at a Diwali celebrtation, held Sunday, Oct. 20, 2019 at Robbinsville High School. For more photos, turn to Page 10. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)
Welcome to the machine Inside Robbinsville’s Amazon warehouse By DiccoN hyatt When it opened in 2014 the Amazon warehouse on Canton Way in Robbinsville instantly became the town’s largest employer and became one of the biggest private companies in the county with its 3,500 workers. Despite its importance, it was hard to know exactly what it was like inside the facility without asking someone who worked there. The com-
pany has recently taken steps to become more transparent. This year, Amazon began offering tours of its warehouses— “fulfillment centers” in company parlance—to the public. U.S. 1 joined one such public tour of the facility on a recent September morning. The walk through the warehouse was led by Kate Pielli of Old Bridge, who worked her way up to tour guide after starting as an entry-level associate. Pielli, who recently celebrated her fourth “Amaversary” of employment, asked not to be quoted for the story. Like a number of other employees in
the facility that day, she was wearing pajamas as part of a childhood cancer treatment fundraiser. Amazon’s 75 fulfillment centers in North America are all named after nearby airports. Robbinsville is dubbed EWR4 for Newark International. (Customers can see which distribution center their packages came from by looking at that airport code.) The warehouse is a massive, fast-moving machine whose purpose it is to sort, package, and send items on their way to customers. The 1.2-millionSee AMAZON, Page 12
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