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Vol. 6 – No. 1 ♦
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The News Leader of the Pines
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FR EE
October 9 - October 15, 2021
Tribune Celebrates Its Fifth Anniversary of Telling Your Stories, Promoting Businesses
TAKING ON THE TOWER AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR
Newspaper’s Importance Revealed in Pandemic’s Difficult Moments By Jayne Cabrilla Staff Writer
Photo By Douglas D. Melegari
An existing cellphone tower in Southampton.
By Bill Bonvie Staff Writer
A Top Environmental Lawyer Is Now Leading the Fight to Steer a FirstNet Cellphone Tower Away from the Center of Chatsworth — But Can’t Raise Residents’ Health Concerns in Arguing Case
WOODLAND —An eleventh-hour attempt to reposition a controversial proposed cellphone tower is putting the village of Chatsworth, the hub of rural Woodland Township, at the center of a much broader national controversy about whether people have the right to challenge the placement of such towers in what might aptly (if not literally) be described
as their back yard. Currently at the forefront of the effort to head off the proposed 120-foot FirstNet “monopole” that was recently approved (for the second time) by the Woodland Township Land Use Board for a site directly behind the volunteer fire and EMS company’s firehouse, is a top legal gun on cell-tower issues, Stuart J. Lieberman of Princeton-based Lieberman Blecher & Sinkevich, which advertises itself as a
major environmental law firm. Lieberman, who first appeared before the land use board at its July hearing, has been retained by Andrew Windisch, a Chatsworth resident whose home is situated in close proximity to the approved site for the cell tower at issue, and who has led a campaign to have it relocated. The land use board’s latest unanimous approval of the proposed tower, which See TOWER/ Page 10
SOUTHAMPTON—The Pine Barrens Tribune is celebrating its quinquennial. With this latest publication, the hometown newspaper for over a dozen Pinelands communities, is beginning its sixth volume, reaching its fifth anniversary. “I remember that while in preparation for our first issue, someone remarked to me, ‘What are you going to write about? Nothing happens in the Pine Barrens,’” said Douglas D. Melegari, publisher and owner of the Tribune. He laughs at that now. The local community newspaper, since publishing its first issue in September 2016, has published well over 1,000 stories, including one with an exclusive interview with the ex-girlfriend of a man fatally shot by a State Trooper on the Garden State Parkway in Bass River Township, cited and linked to by The New York Times, and several others that covered the deadly outbreak of Coronavirus at the New Lisbon Developmental Center in Woodland Township, coverage which was referenced by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Upon the Tribune’s groundbreaking reporting about what was happening at New Lisbon, Jason Laughlin, a reporter of the Inquirer tweeted on Twitter, “the staff at the Pine Barrens Tribune deserves a ton of respect as journalists,” noting that when he and his colleagues saw the “alarmingly See ANNIVERSARY/ Page 8
INDEX Business Directory..........12
Pinelands Homecoming..15
Local News........................2
Worship Guide.................10
Marketplace........................14
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