The System Behind Your Tap
In June 2017, testing in Newark found lead levels in drinking water above the federal action limit. The cause traced back to a water treatment plant that served roughly half the city, where the chemical process meant to keep lead pipes from corroding had quietly failed. By the time the city switched to a mandatory, fully funded replacement program in September 2019, crews were pulling out 80 to 100 lead service lines a day. Newark replaced more than 23,000 of them in under three years, a pace few American cities have matched. That crisis, and the response to it, is a useful way into a system most people never think about until it breaks.
How Water Gets to Your Tap
In Bergen and Hudson counties, drinking water for more than 885,000 people starts at the Oradell Reservoir, formed by a dam on the Hackensack River that Veolia North America has operated for more than a century. The reservoir and three connected lakes hold 3.5 billion gallons and feed roughly 98 million gallons a day to Veolia's Haworth treatment plant. Newark and other cities draw from different sources, often a mix of reservoirs and rivers managed by their own water utilities or by regional suppliers like the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission, which operates the Wanaque Reservoir.
At the treatment plant, raw water goes through a sequence designed to strip out what doesn't belong. Chemicals cause fine particles to clump together into larger flakes, a step called coagulation, which lets those flakes settle out during sedimentation. The water then passes through beds of sand, gravel, and sometimes activated carbon that filter out what's left, catching particles far too small to see. A disinfectant goes in next, usually chlorine or chloramine, to kill remaining bacteria and viruses before the water ever leaves the plant. Utilities pick between the two disinfectants carefully. Chlorine breaks down faster but is easier to manage, while chloramine lasts longer in the pipes but reacts differently with metal surfaces, which is part of why switching disinfectants without adjusting the rest of the chemistry can be risky.
One more step matters more than people realize. Utilities add a corrosion inhibitor, typically orthophosphate, that coats the inside of every pipe in the system with a thin mineral film, similar to how a seasoned cast-iron pan builds up a protective layer. That film is the only thing standing between water and any lead the pipes contain, and it has to be maintained continuously. Get the dose or the water chemistry wrong, and the coating can dissolve within months.
From the plant, water travels through hundreds of miles of underground mains, most now made of ductile iron or PVC, though older sections still run through cast iron or, on the service line connecting a main to an individual house, lead or galvanized steel laid before those materials were banned. Water towers and elevated tanks do the unglamorous work of keeping the whole system pressurized, using gravity and stored volume to push water uphill and through pipes without every drop needing an active pump.
That constant pressure also serves a safety function, since it keeps contaminants from being drawn backward into the system if a pipe breaks. Increasingly, utilities also run their pumps, valves, and treatment steps through SCADA systems, computer networks that monitor pressure, chemical dosing, and flow in real time and can flag a problem before a customer ever notices. Somewhere along that path, on the older end of the system, is where things tend to go wrong.
Where the System Breaks
Lead service lines are the pipes connecting a water main to an individual home, and they were legal and common in New Jersey until Congress banned lead pipes nationally in 1986. Lead itself doesn't dissolve into water on its own. It leaches out when the protective mineral coating inside a pipe breaks down, usually because the corrosion control chemistry at the treatment plant changed or failed, as happened in Newark. Once that coating is gone, water sitting in a lead pipe overnight or over a weekend can pick up enough lead to harm a child's developing brain, since there is no known safe level of lead exposure.
A separate and newer problem is PFAS, a family of manufactured chemicals used for decades in firefighting foam, nonstick coatings, and industrial processes, and nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they barely break down in the environment. New Jersey adopted some of the country's first enforceable drinking water limits for these compounds, setting maximum levels of 14 parts per trillion for PFOA and 13 parts per trillion for both PFOS and PFNA in 2020. Removing PFAS from water requires either granular activated carbon, which works like a filter with an enormous internal surface area that contaminants stick to, or ion exchange resin, which uses charged beads to trap the negatively charged PFAS molecules as water flows through.
Both work well but need to be replaced or regenerated periodically, adding an ongoing cost most utilities didn't budget for a decade ago.
Underneath both of these specific threats sits a blunter problem: age. Much of New Jersey's water infrastructure was built in the early and mid-twentieth century, and pipes don't send a warning before they fail. The EPA's most recent national needs survey put New Jersey's 20-year drinking water infrastructure funding need at $8.6 billion, covering everything from treatment plant upgrades to the thousands of miles of aging mains still in the ground.
The Rules Meant to Catch This Earlier
New Jersey passed the Water Quality Accountability Act in 2017, requiring utilities to maintain documented asset management plans and inspect valves and hydrants on a regular schedule. The lead problem got its own law in 2021, when New Jersey became the first state to mandate full lead service line replacement on a fixed ten-year timeline, with utilities, not homeowners, covering the cost.
That cost recovery is where the fight plays out. New Jersey American Water filed a rate request with the Board of Public Utilities in January 2026 tied to more than $1.4 billion in investment, including pipe replacement, lead line work, and PFAS treatment upgrades, which would raise a typical residential bill by about $10 a month if approved. Utilities that can't cover costs through rates alone can turn to the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank for below-market loans, though demand for that financing regularly outpaces what the state can offer.
What's Still Unresolved
Newark's turnaround happened because the city assembled unusual funding fast and because a health crisis created the will to make replacement free and mandatory. Most New Jersey towns don't have that kind of financing lined up, and the 2021 law's clock is ticking for all of them regardless. Whether smaller systems can replace their lead lines on deadline without Newark's emergency-level mobilization remains an open question, as does who absorbs the growing cost of PFAS treatment.
Sources:
Newark resolves water crisis with service line replacement program
Echoing Newark: How American Cities Can Replicate Newark's Success
North Jersey District Water Supply Commission, Wanaque Project
New Jersey Adopts New PFOA and PFOS Drinking Water Standards, ASDWA
Reducing PFAS in Drinking Water with Treatment Technologies, EPA
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