Senate President Stephen Sweeney announced the hearings on compliance with the 2017 Water Quality Accountability Act amidst an ongoing crisis involving lead in the city of Newark’s drinking water that has forced the city to distribute bottled water to numerous homes with lead service lines.

TRENTON — The New Jersey Senate plans to hold hearings this fall on whether nearly 300 public water systems are complying with a 2-year-old state law that requires them to devise plans to repair and improve their infrastructure and address contamination and quality issues.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney announced the hearings on compliance with the 2017 Water Quality Accountability Act amidst an ongoing crisis involving lead in the city of Newark’s drinking water that has forced the city to distribute bottled water to numerous homes with lead service lines.

While Newark’s lead issue has brought attention to the issue of water system safety and reliability, Sweeney and other lawmakers said the hearings would not be focused on the North Jersey city’s problems but would touch on issues being found in numerous towns across the state, including Bordentown, where there have been some high lead readings.

“We want this state to be one of the first states in the country where we can certify that every water system in this state will have safe, reliable drinking water,” Sweeney said at a Statehouse news conference.

Specifically, lawmakers plan to look closely at compliance with the 2017 law that required public and private water companies and utilities to annually assess their infrastructure and develop asset management plans detailing repairs and upgrades.

The law also required companies to create mitigation plans if they exceeded a certain number of contamination violations within a year and to also create cybersecurity programs to guard internet-connected computer control systems against hackers or potential cyberterrorism attacks.

While the law was hailed at the time as an important measure to address the state’s aging water infrastructure, Sweeney said not all water companies were believed to be in full compliance.

“While they’re working towards it, there are several that are not in compliance right now,” Sweeney said. “About half are in and about half are out right now.”

A complete list of the water systems that are not in compliance with the law was not released.

Sweeney, D-3 of West Deptford, also stressed that the hearings were not a response to Newark’s lead troubles. The city has given out more than 30,000 water filters to homes with high lead levels due to lead service lines to their homes, but recent tests show some of the filters may not be working correctly, prompting the state and city to distribute bottled water.

“The tragedy going on in Newark isn’t because the administration didn’t follow through. They put a plan in place, and unfortunately the plan is not working,” he said. “This isn’t a criticism of Newark by any means.”

Bordentown City’s water system has also wrestled with elevated lead levels detected in the water at some of the homes the system serves. No lead has been found in the system’s source water, and the city has said it has no lead pipes in its distribution system, yet lead tests have exceeded federal standards during the last four consecutive testing periods.

The issue has grown significant enough that the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered the city water department to redo a plan to lower the corrosivity of its water and to take other actions such as physical pipe inspections and advanced water quality testing to try to develop a response to the persistent lead issues. Unlike Newark, Bordentown has not been ordered to distribute bottled water to impacted homes.

Sen. Troy Singleton, D-7 of Delran, recently wrote a letter to the DEP about the Bordentown issue and he will also head up the hearings on the Water Quality Accountability law due to his position as chair of the Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee.

Singleton said the hearings will not involve highlighting individual water systems or how the law was written but would seek solutions and how the law might be improved, along with its implementation and oversight.

“This is a conversation we hope to have about solutions. We’re not finger pointing. We’re not looking at going back to revisit history,” he said. “We’re in a position where we have to find solutions. Too many New Jersey residents feel their water is in peril. We’re going to have recognized experts come in to have the conversation.”

In addition to lead, water systems are also wrestling with issues surrounding possible contamination issues surrounding chemicals such as PFOS and PFOA, which are chemicals found in many household goods and firefighting foam, as well as MTBE, a harmful fuel additive. Aging infrastructure is also causing water main breaks and leaks that result in the loss of millions of gallons of treated water.

Finding the resources required to upgrade water systems and address contamination sources is challenging.

“Money is a big part of this,” said Chris Sturm, a leader with the nonprofit advocacy group, New Jersey Future.

Sweeney said this year’s state budget includes $655 million to assist with water system upgrades but that significantly more is needed.

“The problem is we’re talking billions of dollars to get to where we need to.”

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, supported the decision to hold hearings but said action is also needed to address the state’s numerous water problems.

“It’s important the Legislature steps up to hold water purveyors accountable to not only comply with the law, but also step up and make the improvements,” he said Wednesday after the news conference. “We’ve had hearings in the past. We also need the action piece.”

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