Denise Alvarez

In 2011, more than 1,300 homes (more than 15%) of my town experienced flood damage from rain caused by Hurricane Irene. The local power utility's substation, the municipal complex, and police, fire, and ambulance stations were all underwater. It was so surreal to watch the water rise, and rise, and not stop, as it came up from the sidewalk, to my lawn, to my paver stones! In the aftermath, the town pulled together to repair the damage. For example, one restaurant owner (who had 20 feet of water in his restaurant basement and 8 feet of water in the actual restaurant) worked to find temporary jobs for his employees in other local restaurants while he had to close. Everyone agrees that this experience truly demonstrated the resiliency of Cranford, NJ!  http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/08/hurricane_irene_damage_is_stag.html

Reading a work related email and this article was contained as a link. I thought it was apropos for this group, as it speaks to how changing consumer preferences are impacting how food companies manage their businesses:  https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/23/big-foods-exodus-of-leaders-is-a-symptom-of-larger-crisis.html

A few weeks ago my daughter and I went to a River Clean Up Day that my town sponsors. She got credit towards earning a Girl Scout patch, and we both had our eyes opened to the amount of (mostly plastic) waste that the river had left behind. The river has a rather wide flood plain, so we had our work cut out for us!