Saturday, October 27, 2007

Residents in Action!

A huge thank you goes out to one of our fellow residents who drafted a letter to Dorothy P. Guzzo, Administrator & Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer of the Historical Division of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

A copy of this letter was also sent to the Star Ledger as well as Fox 5 News. Hopefully we can keep our battle going to stop this proposed cell tower. Any suggestions that you may have are of course welcomed! We greatly appreciate your input!

The Letter:

Ms. Guzzo,

The residents of Cranford, Westfield and especially in the area impacted by the proposed cell tower, would like to offer you our sincere thank you for taking the time to review and comment on the issue at hand.

We are very pleased to read in today's paper of your comments regarding the negative impact of the tower to the river and beautiful park area. Our residents take great pride in our neighborhood and also our location in adjacent to the park area. The swim club obviously does not.

I'm sure that the variances that are needed you have reviewed as well. One of our biggest concerns is the negative impact on the future of the pre existing non conforming use that the swim club now occupies. The current zone is R-2, which is residential. We strongly feel that this cell tower will never allow that area to be returned one day to homes and or a park area. If this is allowed, we feel that this is a severe dent and complete disregard for our zoning laws and also a blow to the master plan of returning these non conforming zones one day to the original intended use. Not to mention the negative impact of this historic area.

Needless to say, I (we) have several questions regarding the proposed site as to the NJDEP regulations of having a generating plant within such close proximity to the river with 125 gallons of fuel storage within the structure.

Several other issues that can severely hurt the river and park area are being further discussed and investigated by our residents as well.

I know how familiar you are with the area, myself as well as the residents of the area would like to offer you a walking tour of the park & river areas which would be affected by this tower and structure and we would welcome any suggestions or comments that you would have for continuing effort to stop the swim club and Verizon from moving forward with the application within our municipality. In my words I feel that living within Cranford and especially in that area is not a matter of convenience but it's because of our historic, nature filled beautiful views and of course our river.

I would like to make a request to your office for any documentation that is allowed to be viewed by our residents and also passed onto our local zoning officials as well as board members that would show negative effects that this tower would have.

I would also like to send out my personal thank you to several members of your staff within your office that took the time to return my phone calls with concerns that I had with the application.

We are looking forward to hearing from yourself and staff with any information you can offer.

Great work! The residents of this community are coming together and we will not be stopped!

Keep up the fight Cranford!

Our voices deserve to be heard!