Ted Glick and his wife at their Broughton Avenue home with a monarch butterfly which the raised. The couple will be active in a new town group that hopes to increase the use of solar power generated by the town.
BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Members of a recently formed activist group calling itself “Bloomfield Citizens Solar Campaign” will speak at the public hearing of the Monday, Sept. 25, Bloomfield Council meeting to announce their intentions of getting the township to go solar. One member of the group, Ted Glick, said that this is only the kickoff of the campaign and the group is not going away. The BCSC will also be at the Bloomfield Harvest Fest on Saturday, Oct. 7, and will be making a powerpoint presentation at the Civic Center, on Thursday, Oct. 26, at 7 p.m.
“We are going public to ramp up public pressure,” Glick said during an interview this past weekend.
He has met with public officials for the township and the schools, he said. One concern has been if solar panels would be too heavy for municipal and school district roofs.
“There are many towns in NJ that have had solar panels installed successfully,” Glick said. “We learned that a standard roof can take 30 pounds per-square-foot. That is essentially for snow. The average panel is three to four pounds per-square-foot. The group has been researching if old roofs can support solar panels, too. Brookdale Church is over 200 years old and the solar project is working well there.”
So far, three Bloomfield houses of worship have installed solar panels: Brookdale Reformed Church, Temple Ner Tamid and Park United Methodist Church.
Township Engineer Paul Lasek said in a telephone interview that he and Township Administrator Matt Watkins had met with Glick to discuss solar energy. One concept discussed at the time was a solar canopy over the Town Hall parking lot. But Lasek said there are no plans for this right now.
“But I think it is better to go with this,” Lasek said of the canopy idea. “We have such old roofs.”
Other members of the solar campaign are Glick’s wife, Jane Califf, Bloomfield Planning Board member Michael Palmieri, Bud Feder and Diane Michaels.
Califf said the reason why Bloomfield churches are out in front with solar energy is because they have a moral obligation to preserve God’s creation. Besides being a potential cost saver, solar energy relies on the sun and not fossil fuels to generate electricity. The burning of fossil fuels have been blamed for contributing to global warming.
Palmieri will be at the Civic Center powerpoint presentation which will explain the basic structure, technical advancements and cost-efficiency of solar panels.
“In 1977, it cost $76 for a solar panel to generate a watt of electricity,” he said in a telephone interview. “In 2013, it cost 76 cents.”
The planning board, he said, has recently established a subcommittee that will consider the possible need for the township to think in terms of solar energy. This group is called the Subcommittee of Resiliency. Part of its responsibility will be to determine how well the infrastructure of Bloomfield will hold up to a disaster.
Palmieri said alternate power sources are critical in the event a municipality is disconnected from its electrical source.
Palmieri has done research on solar energy and that NJ makes considerable use of the sun to generate electricity was a surprise to him.
“New Jersey is ranked fifth in solar capacity,” he said. “I didn’t know we were doing that great. And in terms of schools using solar energy, we’re second behind only California.”
Palmieri will be at the public hearing on Monday. He knows the first step he would like the township council to take.
“Issue an RFP — a request for proposal — for a company to come in and give us the numbers of what we can do,” he said. “It’s a very basic step. We’re standing on a precipice called climate change and must take this very small step.”
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