June 18, 2014 • www.theobserver.com • Vol CXXVII, No.4
COVERING: BELLEVILLE • BLOOMFIELD
‘Push to tax polluters’
• EAST NEWARK • HARRISON • KEARNY • LYNDHURST • NORTH ARLINGTON • NUTLEY
Garden’s a Monarchy
By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent KEARNY – U.S. Sens. Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, accompanied by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Regional Administrator Judith Enck, visited a South Kearny Superfund site June 9 to push for a polluter tax to clean the most contaminated industrial sites around the nation. In government jargon, the 15acre Syncon Resins site, 77-89 Jacobus Ave. is classified as an “orphaned” property because no one has stepped up to take responsibility for cleaning up toxins remaining on the site. Syncon Resins, located on the banks of the Passaic River, manufactured paint, varnish and resins until 1982 and the company liquidated its assets a year later, according to Kearny Mayor Alberto Santos. “They have not paid taxes in almost 30 years,” added Santos, “and there is an unpaid tax lien on the books, including interest, that has accrued for about $16 million.” At the time the company stopped operating, it had 13 buildings, many storage facilities including 13,000 55-gallon chemical drums, mostly in poor condition and leaking, plus two unlined wastewater lagoons, according to the state see SYNCON page
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Photo by Karen Zautyk
At Kearny Butterfly Garden, David Mach talks to Brownie troop about the plants that attract flutterbys.
KEARNY– ight now, Monarch butterflies are somewhere along the lower Eastern Seaboard on their long annual journey north from their winter home in Mexico. When they arrive in
R
milkweed, nectar sources and shelter needed to sustain the Monarch butterflies as they migrate through North America.” This is no small matter. The butterflies need all the help they can get. Nature
New Jersey, they will have a certified and registered Monarch Waystation waiting for them in Riverbank Park. As the newly installed sign on the fence of the Kearny Butterfly Garden proclaims, the site “provides
authorities say the Monarch population is at a 20-year low, which should concern us all since the butterflies are an indicator of our general environmental health -- “like a canary in a coal mine,” said see BUTTERFLIES page
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Redistricting ‘lesson’ draws big crowd By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent KEARNY – Kearny Schools Superintendent Patricia Blood unveiled her proposed redistricting plan for five newly reconfigured kindergarten to grade 6 elementary schools last
in September. Several school trustees, including President Bernadette McDonald and other members of the board’s majority bloc, attended last week’s meeting as observers. Blood spent part of the session outlining the revised school boundary lines – (fli-
Thursday night to mixed reactions from a packed house at Lincoln School. The plan – a by-product of the new middle school program for grades 6 and 7 – was to be presented to the Board of Education Monday, June 16, for final approval before being implemented for the fall term
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ers and maps defining those borders were made available to attendees) – and reminded parents that the new borders were a ripple effect of centralizing all seventh- and eighthgraders at Lincoln School. The expectation is that the see MIDDLE page
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