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New construction in Wildwood and homes built since the 1986 won’t have potentially toxic lead pipes, but a lot of older housing stock means the city and its water utility must replace about 7,500 of 17,500 service lines.
Two years ago, the Legislature and Gov. Phil Murphy enacted the Lead Service Line Replacement Law, which requires the replacement of water lines made of the toxic metal and other harmful things by mid-2031.
This will fix, once and for all, a problem known for decades. The lead can leach into drinking water and cause neurological harm, especially to young children.
No question it’s great to finally eliminate a risk that was increasing over time as pipes deteriorated and were disturbed, doing work that has been avoided because of its cost and magnitude. State government and the residents of New Jersey are shouldering this burden for a very worthwhile achievement.
The burden will by quite large -- perhaps nearly $3 billion or more by the time the project is finished, with disruption to hundreds of thousands of properties. Since there are 582 water systems in the state and the funding for the work is already complex and uneven, the impact on each residents will vary.
Flint, Michigan’s crisis with lead in its water system several years ago brought attention to the issue and prompted action nationwide. In 2019 New Jersey’s largest city, Newark, realized the safety of its drinking water was threatened by more than 20,000 water service lines made with lead. Ineffective distributions of bottled water and water filters were followed by the state’s first big lead pipe replacement project, paid for by government, which worked better than anticipated.
In 2021 the state required public and private water utilities to inventory their lead pipes and replace them within a decade. The work is getting rolling this year and may not finish by then. Some municipal water utilities only recently realized how much expensive work they and their ratepayers face. Lead water pipes and lead solder were banned in 1986, so places with more water lines installed before then is where the burden of pipe replacement will be heaviest.
The Wildwood Water Utility figures it has to replace about 7,500 of its 17,500 service lines. Not much of that can be done during the crucial and chaotically busy summer seasons, so don’t be surprised if the city needs the available five-year extension of the 2031 deadline. Michael McIntyre, the utility’s executive director, said the cost could be over $100 million.
Ventnor officials estimate 5,200 lines will need replacement at a cost of $65 million to $75 million.
Margate has been replacing various lines since 1998, and has just 1,400 lead ones to go among its 5,600 service lines. With the state mandating those now, it expects costs to rise by $7 million to $10 million.
Sea Isle City is among the fortunate municipalities, having just 58 with lead out of 3,600 service lines when the mandate arrived. Now only 28 are left.
In most cases the costs are being passed along to water ratepayers, defrayed with varying and too little amounts of federal and state aid.
In December, the Brigantine City Council raised water and sewer rates by 65% to pay for the inventory and replacement, increasing the base rate from $260 to $480 annually.
Rate hikes are imminent for customers of one of the largest publicly traded water systems in the state.
New Jersey American Water, a company serving many municipalities, applied to the state Board of Public Utilities in January for a surcharge to help recover its replacement work. It replaced more than 1,000 lead and galvanized lines the past year in Central New Jersey, and now is getting to work in its South Jersey water system serving Absecon, Egg Harbor Township, Linwood, Northfield, Pleasantville, Somers Point, Galloway Township, Ocean City and Cape May.
Spreading the costs over a wide number of water customers greatly reduces the financial impact of individual replacement work. This also unavoidably charges those who don’t need such work done or who had it done previously and paid for it themselves. Doing otherwise probably would be so time-consuming and fraught with problems as to be effectively impossible.
This simplifies things. When a utility checks a customer’s water lines and says they need to be replaced, in nearly all cases the customer can authorize the work without worrying about the cost, since they’re already paying for it through their water bills.
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A law designed to fight lead pollution in water could hit homeowners with a torrent of rate hikes, leaving local officials to turn to state an…
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New construction in Wildwood and homes built since the 1986 won’t have potentially toxic lead pipes, but a lot of older housing stock means the city and its water utility must replace about 7,500 of 17,500 service lines.
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