Police are still looking into a threat made by a postal worker at a recent Town Council meeting, a town official said last week. The threat has not resulted in the resident’s arrest, but police still want to talk to him. During the public comment session of the March 14 council meeting, a clearly-emotionally upset Mike Jones told the council members that his child had been sick and that if this had anything to do with contamination at the nearby former Keystone metal finishers factory, he’d be back. Tensions have been running high for some time due to past officials’ slow release of information about contamination at the former factory site on Humboldt Street. At the meeting, Jones said, “I’m a post office worker. And if I find out that contamination has made my child sick and you’re not telling me the truth, I’ll be back and I’ll make you understand what it means to go postal.” Shocked residents and officials reacted immediately. Even Jones immediately apologized. Town Administrator Anthony Iacono sought out a police officer. While no arrest was made, nor have charges yet been filed, the police later did review the tape of the meeting. “The police department asked him to do an interview,” Iacono said. “It is clear that he was upset and probably didn’t mean it. The fact is, he made a threat and the police need to take it seriously. It has to do with the safety and well-being of the council and the people who attend those meetings.” Jones, whose wife normally attended meeting seeking answers from the council about conditions surrounding the former site of the Keystone Metal Finishers factory, apparently grew frustrated with the lack of specific information over possible health risks. “He didn’t mean anything by it,” Kim Jones later said during a telephone interview. “I’m the one who normally goes to the meeting, and I’m the one who is most likely to say something inappropriate. But he’s been hearing me talk about the meetings and knows how frustrated I’ve been. When he came to that meeting and heard it for himself, he just reacted.” Mayor Dennis Elwell, who calmed the council and crowd at the meeting, later said the threat would have consequences in regard to how the council handled the Keystone issue. “We’ve been very tolerant in allowing the Keystone issue to come up during the regular meetings even though the resident have meetings of their own with the Keystone committee,” Elwell said. “I think we may have to eliminate comments at the regular meetings because they only seem to encourage confrontations.” Many concerned The remark came after some speakers asked why the town hadn’t made health assessments of residents in the area, even though the federal Environmental Protection Agency – who came in to clean out loose cancer-causing chemicals from the factory in 1991 – had suggested such tests were needed. The town has stood fast on this issue, and officials claim that any such test could be viewed as admission of wrongdoing and leave the town – and its taxpayers – vulnerable to a string of lawsuits. Residents in the affected area, however, have complained that odd illnesses and numerous cases of cancer have inflicted some of the residents around the site. In 1991, the EPA came in after the death of the factory’s owner to remove the dangerous chemicals. But the EPA and the town had been aware of problems on the site for several years earlier. Residents have questioned officials as to whether or not the town conducted health or fire inspections in the 1980s and where those records are if such inspections were done. While the dangerous substances – reported to have been in open containers on the property – were removed by the EPA in 1991along with affected soil, some of the chemicals found their way down into the water table that has since spread under homes in the neighborhood. Local officials claim no danger exists from the current contamination, but residents have been asking if earlier exposure had affected them. EPA tests in 1991 showed many of the chemicals on the Keystone property were found in the basements of local houses, carried there by floods due to heavy rains. Town officials – under legal advice – have refused to do health assessments, yet have cooperated in giving most residents many of the Keystone records. Iacono said last week that the town has attempted to overcome the mistakes of the past by providing residents with as much information as they can. But several residents claim the town has not given them critical reports. “We’re not going to risk getting the town into a lawsuit,” said Councilman Michael Grecco during yet another dispute after the March 14 council meeting, as several residents followed him into the Town Hall lobby. “Most people in this town don’t want to have to pay the legal fees.” Several Keystone area residents claimed that town officials were making judgements by public opinion rather than human decency. They said they have grown more and more frustrated by the legal brick wall town officials have placed between them and what they see as the truth about what really happened at Keystone. “All we’re trying to do is to make sure our families are safe,” said Faith Link, one of the residents in the area. “Our public officials seem to think all we want is money. What we want is the value of our houses back and the assurance that we’ve not been exposed to something that is going to kill us.” Other Keystone residents said that, while Michael Jones should never have made a threat, they understood how he had come to that point. “We’re all scared,” Dawn McAdam, another resident of Humboldt Street. “We all want to know that we’re going to be all right. We want the town to tell us that. And when the town won’t, we get upset.” Iacono said he fully understands how emotional Jones was, but said the threat had to be investigated. “The police have listened to the tape of the meeting and they seem to understand that the man was speaking out of emotion,” Iacono said. “But they want to talk with him to make sure. The fact is, in this day and age, we don’t know when something terrible might happen. ” Iacono said Jones, who works for the post office in Oradell, had hired an attorney, and under legal advice had refused to be interviewed unless charges were filed. Iacono said the police cannot drop the case until they have spoken with Jones. “The police can’t accept that answer,” Iacono said. “In the event something did happen later, the police would be responsible for not following it up.”