Mayor Nicholas Sacco and the Board of Commissioners passed a resolution at the Sept. 23 meeting, calling for the closing of the Bergen Generating Station.
Just about anyone who focuses on environmental journalism, advocacy, or science has a "Eureka!" moment. Here's mine.
I grew up in the suburbs in Bergen County, New Jersey, on the edge of the Hackensack Meadowlands, where the New York metro area dumped its trash, toxic waste, and Mafia corpses.
Acrid smells would waft up the hill from trash fires that would burn unfettered for months.
About once a month, my Mom would drive us across the Meadowlands on a woebegone two-lane called the Belleville Pike, past sinister-looking (and smelling) businesses like the Koppers Coke Co. to visit my grandmother in Jersey City.
Contrast this eyesore and nose-sore with Nauset Marsh, a relatively pristine wetland on Cape Cod. My uncle, a lovable goofball, ran a complex of tourist cottages around a five-acre freshwater pond just up the road. A week or two in one of Walter's cottages was our annual escape.
At about age 12, I took to sneaking down the road and slogging through the marsh. One day, I watched, hypnotized by ordinary nature, as a molting lobster pretty much jumped out of its shell.
And the lightbulb lit up: The Meadowlands that repelled me and the salt marsh that fascinated me were supposed to be the same thing. How did they get to be so different?
