The Pipes Underneath the Affordable Housing Fight

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The Sylvan officially opened this year on the former Unilever research campus at 800 Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs, the borough's first new multifamily development in more than four decades. Its 450 rental homes include 112 three-bedroom townhomes and 90 income-restricted apartments, with affordable rents starting at $559 a month for qualifying households. Getting there took about ten years of litigation.

Fair Share Housing Center and Normandy Real Estate Partners, which controlled the site, had been in court with the borough since 2015. A Superior Court judge stripped Englewood Cliffs of its immunity from builder's remedy lawsuits in 2019. Under a builder's remedy, a court lets a developer build more housing than local zoning allows, including affordable units, when a town has failed to meet its legal obligation. Judge Christine Farrington granted one for 800 Sylvan in early 2020 and appointed a court hearing officer to review the site plan in place of the borough Planning Board.

A 2020 settlement with Fair Share set the project at 450 homes, 90 of them affordable, and an appeals court held the borough to that deal in 2022 after it tried to back out. Englewood Cliffs finally agreed to pay $7 million in 2024 to settle the property owner's breach lawsuit, plus $1.3 million to resolve a tax appeal.

The Sylvan took about a decade to reach opening day. Dates come from court rulings, the 2020 settlement and local reporting. Graphic: TownSquare. Sources: Northern Valley Press, Fair Share Housing Center, ROI-NJ, The Ridgewood Blog. — The Sylvan took about a decade to reach opening day. Dates come from court rulings, the 2020 settlement and local reporting. *Graphic: TownSquare. Sources: Northern Valley Press, Fair Share Housing Center, ROI-NJ, The Ridgewood Blog.*

One line in Farrington's 2020 order drew less attention than the unit counts. The judge required the borough to provide adequate capacity for all utilities and sewers at the sites chosen for affordable housing. Behind nearly every zoning fight in Bergen County sits that quieter question: whether the water mains, sewer lines, and treatment plants under a town can carry hundreds of new households, and who pays when they can't.

Where a Town's Number Comes From

New Jersey's affordable housing obligation traces to the state Supreme Court's Mount Laurel decisions of 1975 and 1983, which held that towns cannot use zoning to shut out lower-income households. The Legislature rewrote the process in March 2024 with P.L.2024, c.2, commonly called A4. Under A4, the state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) calculates an advisory number for every town, and towns then adopt or challenge it for the "fourth round," which runs from 2025 to 2035.

DCA's methodology report puts statewide need at 65,410 homes of "present need" and 84,698 homes of "prospective need." Present need counts existing substandard housing occupied by low- and moderate-income households, such as units lacking full plumbing or a kitchen, or older homes that are overcrowded. Prospective need projects new demand from household growth between the 2010 and 2020 censuses.

Each town's share of prospective need comes from averaging three factors. One measures how much its commercial and industrial property value grew since 1999. A second compares its residents' incomes with the lowest-income town in its region. The third, land capacity, measures vacant land that could hold housing.

Englewood Cliffs shows how the formula plays out. DCA assigned the borough 329 prospective-need homes, driven mostly by its growth in nonresidential value and its high incomes. Its land factor was the smallest of the three, at 0.36 percent of the regional total.

The land screen removes wetlands, preserved open space, slopes steeper than 15 percent, and protected stream buffers. Pipe size never enters the calculation. The only sewer data DCA used is a map of state-designated sewer service areas, applied to weight land in parts of the Highlands region.

Englewood Cliffs' fourth-round number came from three factors. None of them measures water or sewer capacity. Graphic: TownSquare. Source: NJ Department of Community Affairs, Fourth Round Methodology, Appendix A. — Englewood Cliffs' fourth-round number came from three factors. None of them measures water or sewer capacity. *Graphic: TownSquare. Source: NJ Department of Community Affairs, Fourth Round Methodology, Appendix A.*

Why a Pipe Can't Just Take "a Little More"

A water main is a pressurized pipe, so pumps and elevated tanks can push more flow through it on demand, up to a point. On residential streets, mains are usually sized for firefighting. A study for the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District found that fire-protection requirements, far larger than household use, usually set main size. New housing can still strain a water system where pressure drops, at high elevations or the ends of long lines, but the main itself is often not the first thing to run short.

Sewers are less forgiving. Most residential sewer lines run on gravity, laid on a precise downhill slope, and the pipe's diameter and slope together fix how much it can carry. There is no pump to turn up on a gravity line. New Jersey's design rules assign each new home an expected flow of 150 gallons a day for a one-bedroom unit, 225 for two bedrooms, and 300 for three or more. A 100-unit building of two-bedroom apartments is planned at 22,500 gallons a day before anyone moves in.

A water main can be pushed harder. A gravity sewer cannot. Its diameter and slope set the ceiling. Graphic: TownSquare. Sources: Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District; N.J.A.C. 7:14A-23.3. — A water main can be pushed harder. A gravity sewer cannot. Its diameter and slope set the ceiling. *Graphic: TownSquare. Sources: Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District; N.J.A.C. 7:14A-23.3.*

Older pipes also carry water that was never meant to be there. Engineers call the problem infiltration and inflow. Infiltration is groundwater seeping through cracked pipes and loose joints.

Inflow is rainwater entering through roof downspouts and sump pumps tied into the sanitary line. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns that excessive amounts can overload a system in wet weather, which is when sewage backs into basements or spills from manholes. Rainwater filling an old pipe occupies room a new household would need.

All of that flow ends at a regional treatment plant with a permitted limit. In northwest Bergen, the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority treats sewage for 11 towns, including Allendale, Mahwah, Ramsey, and Saddle River, and votes on individual connection applications at public meetings. New sewer extensions also need a Treatment Works Approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection. As a plant's flow approaches its permit, state rules require a capacity assurance program, and a plant that cannot stay under its limit can face a ban on new connections.

When the Pipe Belongs to the Next Town

A dispute on Route 17 shows how contested capacity can get. Saddle River has no public sewer system of its own and relies on private wells and septic tanks, which cannot serve dense housing. AvalonBay Communities won approval to replace an empty office park on the Saddle River and Allendale border with more than 200 apartments, including 18 affordable units and 37 supportive-housing units for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, Gothamist reported in June 2025. The project needed to connect to Allendale's sewer.

Allendale refused. Its attorneys argued that the connection would use capacity the borough needed for its own 200-unit obligation, and its engineering consultants reported that the system lacked room. Engineers answer that question with a hydraulic model, software that simulates how sewage moves through each pipe on an ordinary day and at peak demand. AvalonBay's consultant countered that Allendale had relied on an outdated model and miscalculated. The developer sued both towns.

A judge eventually ordered Allendale to issue the sewer permit before its own feasibility study was finished. The borough complied under protest and appealed, but a later capacity analysis found the system had room. In a settlement approved in January 2026, AvalonBay agreed to pay Allendale $500,000 toward off-site improvements, and in August the two boroughs adopted a sewer connection agreement. Allendale's own fourth-round settlement with Fair Share Housing Center kept a 200-home obligation on paper but, through a separate vacant land adjustment, required only four homes now, which the borough covered by extending deed restrictions on existing affordable units.

Saddle River has no public sewer, so the Route 17 apartments depended on Allendale's system and, beyond it, the regional treatment plant. Graphic: TownSquare. Sources: Gothamist; Borough of Allendale; NorthJersey.com. — Saddle River has no public sewer, so the Route 17 apartments depended on Allendale's system and, beyond it, the regional treatment plant. *Graphic: TownSquare. Sources: Gothamist; Borough of Allendale; NorthJersey.com.*

The case exposes two facts the state formula leaves out. Sewer capacity is shared across municipal lines, so one town's obligation can compete with another's for the same pipe. The capacity figure itself is also an engineering estimate, and two studies of the same pipes reached opposite conclusions.

What the Law Already Allows

Towns do have a formal way to raise a pipe problem. Under rules carried over from the former Council on Affordable Housing, a municipality can seek a durational adjustment when it lacks water or sewer capacity. The adjustment does not erase any homes from the obligation. It postpones them. A town must document the shortfall through its engineers and commit to delivering the homes once capacity becomes available, including by cooperating with a developer willing to build the missing infrastructure.

Hardyston Township in Sussex County seeks a durational adjustment for its full 647-unit obligation in a 2026 plan amendment, noting that its utility authority has already committed 450,350 gallons a day of its 452,000-gallon allocation at the regional plant.

Fair Share Housing Center treats capacity arguments with suspicion. During the Englewood Cliffs case, a spokesman for the group noted that the borough had approved a new LG Electronics headquarters on Sylvan Avenue in the same years it produced no affordable housing at all.

Building Around the Constraint

Several approaches try to add homes without overloading old pipes, and each one solves only part of the problem.

Redeveloping land that is already built on is the most common. Office parks and corporate campuses come with water and sewer connections, and A4 awards a half bonus credit toward a town's obligation for affordable homes built on land previously used for office, retail, or commercial space. The Sylvan fits that pattern. Apartments still produce different flows than offices, though, so the connection has to be reviewed again, as the Route 17 case shows.

Repairing old pipes can also recover capacity. EPA guidance tells utilities near their limits to weigh the cost of removing rainwater and groundwater from the system against the cost of building more treatment capacity. Lining cracked mains and disconnecting downspouts and sump pumps frees room that new homes can use.

The last approach changes who pays. Jersey City updated its water and sewer connection fees in 2026 for the first time since 2001, after an independent study by NW Financial Group. The new maximums are $4,516 for water and $3,691 for sewer per equivalent dwelling unit, a standard measure of expected flow, phased in beginning June 1. A 100-unit residential project that would have paid $185,020 now pays about $760,000. Mayor James Solomon argued that developers should cover their share of the infrastructure that makes their buildings possible, rather than leaving existing ratepayers to absorb it through monthly bills.

A 100-unit project that would have paid $185,020 now pays about $760,000 as Jersey City's first fee update since 2001 phases in. Graphic: TownSquare. Source: City of Jersey City, May 2026.

What's Still Unsettled

The legal campaign against the fourth round has stalled. A coalition of 36 towns led by Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali lost in state and federal court, and on Feb. 24, 2026, Justice Samuel Alito denied its emergency request to pause the law. Ghassali has said the coalition opposes high-density development rather than affordable housing itself. About 380 municipalities had reached compliant plans by the end of 2025, according to Fair Share Housing Center, and every town faced a March 15, 2026 deadline to adopt the zoning that carries its plan out.

The infrastructure question remains open. Each town's number is set without anyone looking at its pipes. Capacity gets settled afterward, one project at a time, through adjustments that delay homes, connection votes at regional utility authorities, and lawsuits like the one on Route 17. None of those mechanisms decides who pays to enlarge a sewer or a treatment plant when a town actually runs short.

Residents can follow the decisions that matter. Every municipality's fourth-round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan is posted through the courts' Affordable Housing Dispute Resolution Program, and a durational adjustment claim will appear there with its supporting engineering. Regional utility authorities vote on sewer connections in public sessions, and plan amendments go through fairness hearings open to the public. Montvale's is next. After a state adjudicator rejected a version in February that let a developer choose a data center over housing on the 34-acre former KPMG campus, a revised settlement requires 50 affordable homes either way. Superior Court Judge Lina Corriston holds its fairness hearing Nov. 18 in Hackensack. Whether a town's connection fees still match what its system costs is a question anyone can raise at a council or utility authority meeting. Jersey City's fees had gone 25 years without an update.