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SEPTEMBER 2019 FREE
COMMUNITYNEWS.ORG
A hop, skip and a jump
New AD is familiar face
Covington hired to replace retiring Bud Kowal as Ewing Public Schools athletic director By JuStin Feil
It’s been a while since Ernie Covington was a student. Now he’s back to learning again in his job as the new athletic director and health/ physical education supervisor at Ewing High School, which began on July 1. Covington’s hiring is part of a turnover among some of the highest profile athletic leaders in the school district, which has replaced its high school football, boys’ and girls’ basket-
ball coaches in the past eight months, as well as longtime Ewing athletic director Bud Kowal. Covington said the departures are a bit of a mixed bag. “The bad of it is that you don’t have somebody that you just say, ‘All right, what you do, keep doing it.’ The good thing is that you can build new programs together and especially being a new AD, you can get the coaches input.” He said that he tries to speak to the new coaches on a daily basis and find out their thoughts. “It’s just to make them a part of it because we’re all on one team, we’re all representing Ewing school district.” Covington comes back to Ewing after working in the Bordentown Regional School
District since 2007. He rose in the ranks there from a health and physical education teacher and baseball coach to assistant football coach, assistant principal in their middle school, and ultimately, assistant principal of athletics for Bordentown Regional High School. “We were very impressed with Mr. Covington’s candidacy,” Ewing Superintendent Michael Nitti said. “He is an experienced administrator with expansive knowledge in athletics and progressive health and physical education. We think he will be an excellent addition to our team.” Covington is not a complete stranger to Ewing and definitely knows the area. A graduate of The College of New Jersey, he See COVINGTON, Page 5
Can this go in recycling? Most residents don’t know the answer, and that’s causing soaring costs By MiCHele alPerin Since 1987, New Jersey state law has mandated recycling, but Mercer County residents can’t seem to figure out what is recyclable and what isn’t. The result has been increasingly contaminated containers and huge increases in recycling costs. The issue is statewide, and local towns are no exception. According to Chris Rupp, director of public works for Robbins-
ville Township, the town’s recycling costs “have doubled from $125,000 per year to $250,000 per year.” Dan Napoleon, director of environmental programs at the Mercer County Improvement Authority, says that the cost per household per year now averages around $29, which generates large bills in populous towns. The major change on the recycling scene, says Frank Fiumefreddo of Solterra Recycling Solutions, is that “the quality of the material we were shipping overseas had gotten to a point that it was unacceptable.” As a result, in 2018, China lowered the minimum allowable percentage of contamination in recycling, throwing the
HEALTH
Autumn Erney, 4, jumps a few hurdles during Ewing Township’s National Night Out event on Aug. 2, 2019 at the Ewing Senior and Community Center. For more photos, turn to Page 9. (Photo by Mark Czajkowski.)
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HEADLINES B I - M O N T H LY N E WS F R O M
entire recycling industry into crisis. Solterra is the contracted hauler for curbside recycling in Robbinsville and towns served by the Mercer County Improvement Authority, including Ewing. “They went from maybe five percent, and the new standard was they would not accept any material with greater than onehalf of one percent contamination,” Napoleon says. “We saw a 40 percent increase in collection costs as a result.” Because the biggest contributors to contamination of the recycling stream are plastic bags and pizza boxes, Robbinsville and the Mercer County Improvement AuthorSee RECYCLE, Page 6
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