FEBRUARY 2019
FREE
COMMUNITYNEWS.ORG
Hoop, there it is Residents tire of TWW turmoil As Trenton Water Works receives new violations, customers seek alternatives By roB antheS
ranthes@communitynews.org
Coming off the worst year in its history, Trenton Water Works received notice of three more state violations in January, continuing a cycle the utility has spent months trying to break. Meanwhile, tired of questioning TWW’s ability to fulfill its purpose, residents and suburban towns served by the utility have begun resorting to other measures to ensure they have clean drinking water.
Trenton Water Works has insisted the water coming from its system always has been safe. TWW’s management says while progress has been made in correcting deficiencies in staffing and procedures, it continues to struggle to meet state Department of Environmental Protection requirements. All three of the January violations, for example, were due to clerical or administrative issues such as missed deadlines, not new questions about water quality. “State agencies have a tendency to focus too much on the process and not on the final result...What you want as an end result of the DEP regulating TWW is high-quality water,” said Shing-Fu Hsueh, Trenton Water Works’ new director and a former DEP water-quality expert. “What
the process needs to focus on is technical procedures and hiring enough people with the expertise to carry them out. Instead, their mentality is, ‘By this date, you have to submit this report.’” TWW customers will be receiving notices about the January violations in the coming weeks. Trenton Water Works customers in Ewing, Hamilton, Hopewell Township, Lawrence and Trenton have become familiar with the public notices, many of them full of language suggesting there could be health concerns with the water. TWW has issued 24 such letters in the last two years. While Hsueh contends that DEP-mandated violation notices can create unnecessary panic, he might find the specifics matter little to TWW customers, who just See WATER, Page 10
‘Retired’ guitarist back on the road By richard J. SKelly
Lawrence High School basketball player Aaron Jones dribbles during a 56-42 win at Steinert High School Jan. 18, 2019. For more boys’ basketball coverage, turn to Page 18. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)
Like a lot of veteran musicians who frequent Garden State clubs, coffeehouses, and other venues, guitarist and singer Jerry Steele never let his passion for music interfere with making good money. Steele spent 30 years as a booking agent at the Harry Walker Agency in New York City, booking famous and not so-famous people on the lecture circuit, before “retiring” to the career choice of his youth: playing in small groups and at solo gigs in the greater Princeton area. He lived for a number of years in Westchester County but in 1987 he moved to the Princeton region and lives in Lawrenceville where he and his wife, Telfair, raised three daughters.
He has also gained a lot of enjoyment and artistry playing with prominent friends like Buddy Miller and keyboardist Tom Reock, while making a name for himself on the winery circuit. “All that time at the Harry Walker Agency I’d been playing music as a sideline, and I realized when I retired I could do whatever I wanted. So now I’m a full-time professional musician,” he says during an interview in the wine barn office at Terhune Orchards. Steele performs there as part of Terhune’s free Winery Sunday Music Series. “There are a surprising number of wineries in New Jersey, and I like to play them,” he says, citing the afternoon and early evening hours. “I’m too old to play bars where we start
HEALTH
HEADLINES B I - M O N T H LY N E WS F R O M
pg 13
at 10 p.m.” says Steele, who graduated from Princeton High School in 1968. Like a lot of area musicians who plied their craft in TrentonPrinceton-New Brunswick corridor clubs in the early 1970s, he cut short his college career as an English major at Lehigh University, as the easy money lure of the music scene proved too powerful. His parents—Martin, a physicist at the David Sarnoff Research Center and Marian, a housewife who played clarinet as an avocation — were hurt by his decision to drop out in 1971. But, undeterred, he moved to Manhattan, where he says he starved trying to make a living as a musician and eventually took a job as a roadie with PhilSee STEELE, Page 5
Academy Dental CHILDREN
& ADULTS
Complete Dentistry for the Whole Family
AcademyDentalNJ.com
CALL TODAY! 609-256-6555 State of the Art Facility • Walk-Ins / 24 Hour Emergency On Call Accepting Most Insurances • Game Room with X-Boxes See our ad on page 12
1179 NEWARK, NJ