My Weekend at the Watchtower Society's HQ: Warwick and Walkill

[JW Insider]

I am writing this on Sunday 12/9 at about 3:30 PM.

On Thursday night I drove up here to Warwick with relatives. We completed the five exhibits at Warwick, spoke with some Bethelites we knew, and attended the Sunday morning meeting held in the Bethel Auditorium where the "Long Meadow" congregation meets. This is a congregation of about 180 persons, some of whom travel from up to about half-an-hour away, and many (if not most) of the members are Bethelites who live in the HQ complex on site.

Tomorrow we'll go to Wallkill.

The first thing you notice from setting your smartphone maps and GPS routing systems is that the Warwick Bethel is not in Warwick. It's actually all within the borders and limits of Tuxedo Park, NY. If you look at the back of the Warwick Bethel brochure you'll see that 1 Kings Drive, Tuxedo Park, NY 10987 is the actual address. 

The name was picked, I assume, because Warwick is a town just a little farther away, in another zip code (10990), and smaller than Tuxedo Park, but with a name that sounds just a bit more Biblical. It's a name that also sounds a bit more alliterative: as in, "Watchtower at Wallkill" and "Watchtower at Warwick." Wars, Wicks, Walls, and Kills are all found in the Bible, but no Tuxedos of any stripe.

The exhibits were very good. I'll find my previous post that discusses them and try to get it to land below this one.

[TrueTomHarley]

44 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

The name was picked, I assume, because Warwick is a town just a little farther away, in another zip code (10990), and smaller than Tuxedo Park, but with a name that sounds just a bit more Biblical. It's a name that also sounds a bit more alliterative: as in, "Watchtower at Wallkill" and "Watchtower at Warwick." Wars, Wicks, Walls, and Kills are all found in the Bible, but no Tuxedos of any stripe.

The building inspectors that comment in the video are from the Town of Warwick.

”but no Tuxedos of any stripe.”

Be grateful and ask no questions. It’s not enough for you to have to wear a suit?

 

 

[JW Insider]

16 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

The building inspectors that comment in the video are from the Town of Warwick.

Planning Board too. Nevertheless, even the early articles about it say this: https://shar.es/aaYQ1i

• The Watch Tower Society also is providing some on site medical services and have made arrangements with the Greenwood Lake Fire District; it is also working with the Tuxedo Fire District.
• If any of the Headquarters residents decide to move off site to have children, they then would pay taxes and their children would likely go to the Tuxedo school district.

[TrueTomHarley]

3 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Planning Board too. Nevertheless, even the early articles about it say this: https://shar.es/aaYQ1i

• The Watch Tower Society also is providing some on site medical services and have made arrangements with the Greenwood Lake Fire District; it is also working with the Tuxedo Fire District.
• If any of the Headquarters residents decide to move off site to have children, they then would pay taxes and their children would likely go to the Tuxedo school district.

Maybe it is a turf war and the brothers are playing it like Paul did the Pharisees vs. the Sadducees.

[JW Insider]

7 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Maybe it is a turf war

I suspect it has more to do with the water issues that Warwick had dealt with in the lakes that begin in their region and spill down toward the WTS HQ. But I can look into it. I now have a contact who worked on these issues with Warwick and Tuxedo Park.

[TrueTomHarley]

15 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

But I can look into it. I now have a contact who worked on these issues with Warwick and Tuxedo Park.

If it is not explained to my satisfaction, I’m outta here. There is only so much tacking that a guy can take.

[JW Insider]

58 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

If it is not explained to my satisfaction, I’m outta here. There is only so much tacking that a guy can take.

Sorry, won't be to your satisfaction. We'll miss you!

So I just talked to someone who worked in the four major NY locations: Brooklyn, Patterson, Wallkill and Warwick. There were water problems with all 4. Patterson was the worst and they had to retrofit the pipes because of the mineral deposits. It was easily predictable according to the engineers, but the expensive outside engineers were quickly replaced with Bethel insiders. There were runoff problems up in Wallkill and no one can pump water from the aquifer there anyway, so they decided on a reservoir instead of the local Wallkill River. In so doing they discovered new problems for engineers to handle (some self-made over the years). The problems in Warwick were resolved after clean-up of the nickel and related minerals, but the lake water is considered very sensitive for several environmental reasons. Much of the planning had to do with level of water usage, where water comes from for fire dept utilization, what goes into the lake, what comes out of the lake.

All in all, it was the water. Warwick deals with the Sterling Lake and the Sterling Forest State Park and therefore extends their coverage for Water and environmental issues down into the Greenwood Lake and Sterling Forest Lake where the JW HQ sits. They are already connected by a stream between them, too.

[Evacuated]

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I’m outta here

No you're not!!!!!

[Evacuated]

25 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

All in all, it was the water.

Fascinating stuff. These are the issues behind the scenes that most of us know nothing about. Any chance of a more comprehensive review?

[JW Insider]

On 12/9/2018 at 6:25 PM, Outta Here said:

Fascinating stuff. These are the issues behind the scenes that most of us know nothing about. Any chance of a more comprehensive review?

I posted about this just after getting off the phone with someone I knew, but had just recontacted earlier today. The conversation went to a lot of places that I won't go into much more detail about here.  As an engineer, he was involved in cleaning up a shale mine (for gravel), buried barrels of waste at Wallkill, suing the previous owners of "International Nickel" at Warwick for remediation (they owned the land prior), an endangered species, air contamination reports, etc. (Actually it was air contamination laws that pushed the printing from Brooklyn to Wallkill in the first place. Wallkill had none.) I even learned that run-off from a cemetery (i.e. launching pad) from old embalming methods can contain arsenic, and other bad stuff. 

But the brother wanted to make it clear that these were not "scandals" as some might try to make them out to be. The WTS was actually more careful than most corporations about keeping well within the law, and some of the old practices are under different laws today. Whenever a new project is being done, it's a chance to get the owners to fix things according to new law and new knowledge.

One reason I had met up with him earlier today is that on Friday, when flushing the toilets in the first floor men's room at Warwick, all the water was brown in all the toilets, even after flushing them. I took a video in case it was a problem, and can post it, but I won't for obvious reasons. I went to the sink and stopped it up with a napkin to fill it and see if it was also affected. It wasn't. I went to a urinal and it was, although less obvious due to shallower running water. Others saw it to, but I doubted anyone would speak up. I ran down to the first lower floor men's room to check it but it was closed. I filled up a cup from the drinking fountain and saw no sign of contamination.

Today, I went back and checked both bathrooms. No problem anywhere. I asked the engineer what it probably was, and he told me. Nothing to worry about, by the way.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

23 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Today, I went back and checked both bathrooms. No problem anywhere. I asked the engineer what it probably was, and he told me. Nothing to worry about, by the way.

 

[JW Insider]

10 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

40 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Nothing to worry about, by the way.

Every time I decide to go on a diet, the lettuce is contaminated!

Every time I go to Chipotle's they have an announcement that something is no longer being served. The guacamole for a while, then last week when they put up a sign saying they would not be serving lettuce in their burritos/bowls until further notice . . .

. . . and now I heard that they've pulled pork again.

Oh wait, scratch that . . . [JWI holds an earpiece a little tighter to his ear]. . . I'm just now being told that "pulled pork" is an actual thing. Who knew? So, actually, it's an announcement: Chipotle's: they have "pulled pork" again!