Tears, Shouting at JCPL Meeting Wednesday Night in Hazlet

Hazlet, NJ - At tonight's "open house" put on by Jersey Central Power & Light to introduce its highly controversial transformer line project to the Hazlet area, one woman became so upset she started crying.

"You don't care, you don't care! You are just putting in these lines and you don't care about us!," shouted Christine Maiorano at a JCP&L employee inside the packed North Centerville Volunteer Fire Company hall, tears streaming down her face. The male employee was silent and looked shocked.

"Please don't take my wife's picture," her husband, Michael Maiorano, said to the Patch reporter who witnessed the whole scene. "My wife is just really upset about this whole thing. We have a 7- and a 9-year-old, and we're just really worried about our kids' health."

"And then you come to this and try to ask questions, get some answers and these people are just stone-faced," he continued. "They tell you, 'That's not my department.' Or, that concern you have 'is not a concern.'"

The Middletown couple live on Oak Hill Road, and, like so many others, their property abuts the North Jersey Coast rail line along which JCP&L plans to erect 10 miles of megawatt power lines. The lines will carry 230,000 volts of power, and will stand anywhere from 140 to 210 feet tall. The lines will clearly be seen from the Maiorano's backyard, and will emit a 24/7 buzzing sound.

"Like bees," said Kristin Lunanuova, a Johnny Court resident whose property also abuts the rail line. Lunanuova is one of the residents leading the resurrected group RAGE (Residents Against Giant Electric), which aims to defeat the proposal.

"We recently had our home appraised and it was about $800,000. These power lines will bring it down by $100,000, $200,000," said a Middletown resident who didn't want to be named.

"These are people's life savings," said Lunanuova. "This is everything we've worked our entire lives for."

Residents were dismissive of JCP&L's meetings to explain the proposal, calling them "a commercial" or "a sales pitch."

"I'm a little disappointed," said Jennifer, 39, a Holmdel resident. "I don't feel like I'm getting a lot of answers here. This is just a sales pitch."

Members of RAGE are scheduled to meet with Middletown Mayor Gerry Scharfenberger Thursday night to try and stop the proposal, or at the very least, get JCP&L to bury the lines underground.

But a company spokesman told Patch that's not likely.

"Burying the lines sounds like a good idea, but there are many factors as to why you can't bury a transmission line: You can't dig up along a railroad ... NJ Transit says we're not allowed to," said JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano. "You have to put huge vaults in. There's also a cost element, too. It does cost 4-10 times more to put the line underground than it does to put the line above ground."

Should the state approve the project, construction will start in 2017.

Photos: Kristin Lunanuova holds up a sign at Wednesday night's meeting; a resident shows others the electromagnetic radiation his detector picked up from existing power lines in the area; a JCP&L employee explains the project to concerned residents.