Current Bordentown
SEPTEMBER 2019 FREE
‘What are my 15 minutes of fame?’
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City’s water woes continue
Fowl play
Bordentown resident appears on ‘Jeopardy!’
By saMantHa sciarrotta
By Justin Feil Cristina Somolinos felt lucky enough to get on “Jeopardy!” and luckier yet to know that anyone in Bordentown took notice. “I knew I made it when the staff at the Bordentown Library said they heard I was going to be on,” Somolinos said. “That was the pinnacle of success for me.” Somolinos, a frequent patron of the library, is a Brown University graduate who started working as a forensic scientist while earning her master’s in library and information science from Rutgers University. “I just love inhaling data and trying to learn about stuff and figure out why things are connected,” Somolinos said. “That's just me.” Somolinos put her wealth of knowledge on display in a dream come true when “Jeopardy!” aired her episode on July 22— host Alex Trebek’s 79th birthday. “I knew how I did and I had to keep that a secret basically until the airing happened, and I still had a watch party and I invited people,” Somolinos said. “I was like, ‘I’m really happy I made it that far. It's really a bizarre thing that’s never going to happen again so let's invite people over.’ It was good and bad. It was the night where basically a good chunk of Bordentown lost power so a good chunk of people didn't get to see it.” See SOMOLINOS, Page 6
Gwenne Baile, also known as the “Chicken Lady,” reads to children with Blossom, a therapy chicken, at the Bordentown Librar y Aug. 14, 2019. For the stor y, see Page 10. (Photo by Julia Marnin.)
Encouraging lifelong learning Program offers ESL, civics courses and more By MicHele alPerin Krista Csapo works during the day as a middle school teacher in Delran, but the Bordentown resident spends evenings in what she says is “probably the most rewarding job I’ve ever done”—preparing adults to earn high school equivalency diplomas in Bordentown’s adult education program. “These adults see changes in their lives that they’ve been meaning to make for many years,” she says. Students in the program run the gamut in age, motivation and life circumstances, says Darlene
de la Cruz, supervisor of Bordentown’s adult basic education, English as a second language, and high school equivalency program. The most common reason students dropped out of school was overwhelming family circumstances, she says, and the people who stereotype these students as having been “too lazy” to complete high school are simply wrong, she says. Csapo is particularly proud of two students. The first, after doing well in high school, stopped going to school in his junior year, when his mother went to war in Iraq. When he tried to return, the school told him he had missed too many days and couldn’t begin again until the next school year.
Life took over, and “it took until he had a little girl 10 years later and decided, ‘I want to do this for my daughter. I want to show her that I will give her a good life.’” By then he was 28 and working as a truck driver, but he came to class every day with his tiny baby in a carrier. “He was so determined; he worked really hard,” Csapo says, and a year later he had his diploma. A week or so after passing the high school equivalency test, he called her for help with his resume and a cover letter, which got him a place in an apprenticeship program for New Jersey Transit. He is now a permanent employee, working as a lineman. A second man, her father’s See CLASSES, Page 8
Lead levels in Bordentown City’s water continue to rise as officials attempt to ease residents’ concerns about the safety of the water coming into their homes. The city has hosted several information sessions, continues to offer free testing for residents and has collected dozens of samples from homes and other local testing points. But, despite the city government’s efforts, questions about water quality still persist. Bordentown City’s water has exceeded federal since July 2017—four consecutive testing periods. In the first half of 2019, lead levels reached 50 parts per billion, an increase of 78 percent since the second half of 2018. Eight of the 60 homes tested returned results triple the federal limit of 15 ppb. The state Department of Environmental Protection jumped into action in July, requiring the Bordentown Water Department to conduct a corrosion control study. Corrosion control is important because corrosive water can eat away at materials it comes into contact with, including metals like lead, which then leach into the water system. Last year, the department added orthophosphates to the water in order to combat corrosivity. The orthophosphates should prevent lead from leaching into the water by coating the pipes it passes through. Orthophosphates cannot undo corroSee WATER, Page 9
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