Newberg feted for community work

Receives SYDA community service award

By FRITZ MAYER

SOUTH FALLSBURG, NY — These days, Janet Newberg is best known as a person who is pushing for aggressive recycling in Sullivan County and for campaigning against the expansion of the landfill in Monticello. But her work in community causes started well before the landfill became a major issue.

In 1990, she founded the Sullivan County Alzheimer’s Committee, which soon became the Sullivan Delaware Chapter of the National Alzheimer’s Association and is now part of the Hudson Valley/Rockland Westchester Chapter.

Recognizing this, the SYDA Foundation awarded Newberg with their 23rd annual Community Service Award at the organization’s facility in South Fallsburg on September 10. The SYDA Foundation helps disseminate Siddha Yoga philosophy and culture. An important part of the philosophy is service to community, which is why it gives out awards and why Newberg was chosen.

In introducing Newberg, Sullivan County Legislator Ron Hiatt called her “caring, relentless and indefatigable.” He also said, “You don’t want to be on the wrong side of her.”

In accepting the award, Newberg explained that she founded the Sullivan County Alzheimer’s Committee in 1990, when her father, who was suffering from the disease at the time, wandered away from his home, as do many Alzheimer’s patients.

Even as she and other members of the family searched for him over a period of a week, she founded the group hoping it would help their cause and other patients in the future. Her father was eventually found, but he had passed away.

Her commitment remained strong, and the committee she founded grew to become part of what is now one of the top five chapters of the 77 in the country.

Her activism did not end there.

In her remarks, she said, “I was told you can have more than one passion.” In 2002, when a company called Calpine wanted to build a 500-megawatt power plant in the middle of Monticello, Newberg and some associates formed a group called Special Protection of the Environment for the County of Sullivan (SPECS) to stop it. Their view was that a facility that large did not belong in the county’s most populated area, and they lobbied Village of Monticello officials to deny Calpine the ability to use the Monticello sewer system for its plant. Ultimately, village officials agreed with SPECS and the Calpine plan faded from view.

A couple of years later, when the issue of the landfill flared up because of odors from the facility and the county’s plan to expand, SPECS and Newberg launched a battle to stop the expansion. That battle is ongoing, although the costly legal effort was handed off from SPECS to the residents of Mountain Lodge Estates. Still, Newberg remains active on the issue as a member of the Sullivan County Recycling Advisory Committee.

In concluding her remarks, Newberg said she became a community activist because “I thought if I do nothing, nothing will get done.” She urged the audience, “Whatever your cause, become actively involved and just do something.”