NJ Clean Stream

The nine issues — and why they are all connected

It would be convenient if New Jersey's water problems were simple and separable — if fixing lead pipes solved the lead problem, if regulating PFAS solved the chemical contamination problem, if building bigger stormwater pipes solved the flooding problem. They are not simple and they are not separable. The nine issue areas described in this section are deeply interconnected, sharing common causes — aging infrastructure, inadequate regulation, the political power of polluting industries, the invisibility of underground systems, and the chronic underinvestment in the public goods that clean water requires.

An aging water main that breaks creates a pressure transient that can dislodge lead from service lines, sending lead-contaminated water to taps throughout the neighborhood — a risk compounded in communities where school buildings have the oldest plumbing. Nutrient runoff from South Jersey's farms feeds algal blooms in water supply reservoirs, increasing the difficulty and cost of treatment. Climate change intensifies both the drought conditions that concentrate agricultural pollutants and the extreme rainfall events that trigger the combined sewer overflows that contaminate urban rivers. Sea level rise accelerates saltwater intrusion into the coastal aquifers that private well users depend on. Microplastics and 1,4-dioxane accumulate in the same groundwater bodies that serve private wells, while the regulatory frameworks for each contaminant remain separately underdeveloped. Investing in green infrastructure for stormwater management also reduces combined sewer overflows, improves water quality in receiving streams, mitigates urban heat, and reduces the peak flows that stress aging water mains.

Understanding this interconnection matters for advocacy. The returns from water infrastructure investment are systematically undervalued because they are distributed across multiple outcome domains that are rarely measured together. And in every issue area, the communities that bear the greatest burden are disproportionately lower-income and disproportionately communities of color — the predictable product of a history in which environmental protections and infrastructure investment have systematically underserved communities with less political and economic power.

1. Lead in school drinking water

There is no safe level of lead exposure for children. This is not a contested scientific claim — it is the settled position of the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the full body of peer-reviewed research on lead's neurotoxicity. Lead damages the developing brain at any detectable level, reducing IQ, shortening attention span, impairing executive function, and increasing the likelihood of behavioral problems that follow affected children into adulthood. The damage is largely irreversible. Prevention is the only meaningful public health strategy.

New Jersey's public schools are required to test their drinking water outlets for lead, disclose results to parents and staff, and take outlets out of service when results exceed 15 parts per billion. This framework, enacted in 2016 and strengthened in 2021, represents real progress. But NJ Clean Stream's detailed examination of how it works in practice identifies seven structural gaps that significantly undermine its effectiveness: private and parochial schools are excluded entirely from mandatory testing; the 15 ppb action level is an engineering benchmark from 1991, not a health standard — the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends remediating any fixture above 1 ppb; the five-year testing cycle is too infrequent; there is no publicly accessible database of results; remediation standards are inadequate and largely unenforced; there is no dedicated state funding for lead plumbing replacement; and notification requirements fail to reach families who don't read English.

The equity dimension is stark. The schools with the oldest buildings and the most lead-containing plumbing are disproportionately in lower-income communities and communities of color. The same historical disinvestment that produced the aging buildings produced the aging pipes — and the communities least able to fund remediation are the ones most in need of it.

• 1.1The water fountains in your child's school may be poisoning them — and NJ isn't doing enough about it
• 1.2How to read your school's lead test results — and what to do if the numbers are high
• 1.3Why NJ's school lead testing law has loopholes big enough to drive a school bus through

2. Combined sewer overflows

When it rains heavily in Newark, Trenton, Camden, or Paterson, raw sewage flows into the rivers that run through those cities. Legally. This is not a malfunction. It is the designed behavior of combined sewer systems — the single-pipe infrastructure built into New Jersey's older cities before the mid-twentieth century — that cannot handle the volume of stormwater that modern urban development generates during significant rain events. New Jersey has 191 permitted combined sewer overflow outfall locations. Together, they discharge billions of gallons of raw sewage-contaminated stormwater into the state's rivers every year, producing pathogen contamination that makes those rivers unsafe for contact recreation for days after rain events, nutrient loading that drives algal blooms, and ultimately beach closures along the Jersey Shore.

The communities bearing the heaviest CSO burdens are the state's older, denser, lower-income cities — Newark, Trenton, Camden, Paterson — whose residents have been living with sewage-contaminated waterways for generations while wealthier communities with modern separate sewer systems recreate on clean water miles away. This is an environmental justice issue as clearly as any: the legacy of infrastructure investment decisions made a century ago continues to determine who has access to clean water and who does not. The solution involves both green infrastructure — rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs, and permeable pavement — and targeted gray infrastructure upgrades for the portions of the system that cannot be managed through distributed green approaches alone.

• 2.1When it rains in NJ cities, raw sewage flows into your rivers — legally
• 2.2The cities most burdened by combined sewer overflows — and why it's an environmental justice issue
• 2.3Green infrastructure vs. gray: how NJ can fix its CSO problem without just building bigger pipes

3. 1,4-Dioxane — the next PFAS

Most New Jersey residents have never heard of 1,4-dioxane. This is exactly the problem. 1,4-dioxane is a synthetic chemical compound used for decades as a stabilizer in industrial solvents, as a processing aid in pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing, and as a byproduct of surfactant production. It is present in groundwater near industrial sites, military installations, and dry cleaning facilities throughout New Jersey — in concentrations the EPA considers likely to cause cancer at levels far below what most water utilities are currently testing for, let alone required to remediate.

What makes 1,4-dioxane particularly insidious is a combination of properties: it moves through aquifers nearly as freely as water itself, it does not biodegrade under natural conditions, it is not removed by conventional drinking water treatment, and — critically — it is not removed by the granular activated carbon systems that many utilities installed to address PFAS and other organic contaminants. The treatment technology that does work — ultraviolet advanced oxidation — is significantly more expensive. New York State has established a 1 ppb maximum contaminant level. Connecticut has established 3 ppb. New Jersey has established neither a standard nor a monitoring requirement. NJ Clean Stream is drawing a direct parallel to PFAS — we are earlier in the same arc, and there is still time to get ahead of it.

• 3.1You've never heard of 1,4-dioxane — but it may already be in your water
• 3.2The industrial sites behind NJ's 1,4-dioxane contamination — and who's paying to clean them up
• 3.3Why 1,4-dioxane is harder to treat than PFAS — and what that means for NJ water systems

4. Private well contamination

Approximately 700,000 New Jersey households — roughly one in six residential water consumers in the state — drink from private wells that are almost entirely outside the regulatory framework of the Safe Drinking Water Act. There is no mandatory testing schedule. There are no enforceable maximum contaminant levels that apply to private well water. There is no requirement that a homeowner test their well at any point, under any circumstances.

These households may be drinking water containing nitrates from agricultural fertilizers, arsenic from natural geological formations, radon from uranium-bearing bedrock, coliform bacteria from failing septic systems, PFAS from military and industrial sources, volatile organic compounds from nearby industrial operations, and 1,4-dioxane from contaminated groundwater — in most cases without any awareness that their water is contaminated. New Jersey's Private Well Testing Act of 2002 requires testing only at real estate transactions, excludes PFAS and 1,4-dioxane from its standard panel, requires disclosure but not remediation, and has no dedicated state fund to help lower-income well owners address contamination when they find it. The specific gaps in the law and the legislative changes needed to close them are examined in detail in Article 3 of this series.

• 4.1700,000 NJ households drink from private wells — with almost no oversight
• 4.2What's actually in NJ private well water — a contaminant guide for homeowners
• 4.3Buying or selling a home with a private well in NJ? Here's what the law requires — and what it misses

5. Aging water main infrastructure

New Jersey's water mains average more than 50 years in age. In the state's oldest cities, significant portions of the distribution system were installed more than a century ago. The infrastructure is failing incrementally — thousands of main breaks per year, each one not just a reliability problem but a water quality event. As Article 2 of this series explains in detail, every main break creates pressure transients that allow soil, groundwater, and contaminants to enter the distribution system through the cracks, corrosion pits, and failed joint caulking of aged cast iron pipe — and can dislodge lead particles from the 350,000 lead service lines still in service in New Jersey, sending lead-contaminated water to customers' taps for days or weeks after the repair.

The financial structure of water utility regulation has produced decades of underinvestment. Article 3 of this series examines how the NJ Board of Public Utilities rate-setting process, the infrequency of rate cases, and the political invisibility of underground infrastructure combine to create systematic incentives for deferring capital investment — and what regulatory reforms would change those incentives. The communities with the oldest infrastructure are disproportionately communities that can least afford to fix it. The rate increases needed to close the investment gap fall hardest on the lower-income customers who constitute the majority of their ratepayer bases.

• 5.1NJ's water mains are crumbling — and you're paying for it on your water bill
• 5.2Every main break is a backflow event waiting to happen — the hidden safety risk of aging pipes
• 5.3How NJ sets water rates — and why the utility model makes it hard to invest in pipes nobody can see

6. Stormwater fees and green infrastructure

In 2019, New Jersey gave municipalities a powerful new tool: the authority to create stormwater utilities and charge fees based on impervious surface area — a legally defensible, dedicated revenue mechanism for funding stormwater management without competing with roads, police, and schools in the general fund budget. More than five years later, most of New Jersey's 564 municipalities have not established stormwater utilities. Political resistance, large property owner lobbying, administrative complexity, and inertia have combined to leave one of the most important new water quality funding tools in decades largely unused.

Green infrastructure — rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs, permeable pavement, and urban trees — works and is more cost-effective than gray infrastructure for managing the smaller, more frequent storm events that account for most annual stormwater volume and pollutant loads. Philadelphia's Green City, Clean Waters program has demonstrated at city scale that primarily green approaches can reduce combined sewer overflow volumes at a fraction of the cost of equivalent gray infrastructure investment. For residents who want to push their own town to adopt a stormwater utility, Article 3 provides a step-by-step guide to the municipal process — who decides, what arguments work, what objections you will face, and how to build the political will that makes adoption happen.

• 6.1NJ has a new tool to fund clean water — and many towns are refusing to use it
• 6.2What green infrastructure actually looks like in a NJ neighborhood — and why it works better than pipes
• 6.3How to push your town to adopt a stormwater utility — a resident's guide to the municipal process

7. Microplastics in NJ drinking water

Microplastics — particles of synthetic polymer smaller than five millimeters, ranging down to nanoplastics invisible to the naked eye — are present in virtually every water source that researchers have examined: rivers, reservoirs, groundwater, treated drinking water, and bottled water. They have been found in human blood, breast milk, lung tissue, placental tissue, and brain tissue. A landmark 2024 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patients with detectable microplastics and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had significantly elevated risk of heart attack, stroke, and death — the first direct human evidence linking microplastic body burden to clinical health outcomes.

New Jersey, with its dense highway network generating tire rubber wear particles, its massive synthetic textile fiber discharge through wastewater treatment plants, and its highly littered coastline, is one of the most heavily microplastic-loaded states in the nation. Yet there is no federal maximum contaminant level, no New Jersey state standard, and no mandatory monitoring requirement for public water systems. The treatment challenge is particularly acute: conventional drinking water treatment removes 70 to 95 percent of larger microplastic particles, but nanoplastics — the smallest and most potentially harmful fraction — pass through conventional treatment essentially unimpeded. The particles most worrying from a health standpoint are the ones that are hardest to remove.

• 7.1Microplastics are in NJ's drinking water — and we're only beginning to understand what that means
• 7.2Where NJ's microplastics come from — and which sources are hardest to control
• 7.3Can water treatment plants remove microplastics? What NJ systems do — and don't — filter out

8. Climate change and NJ water supply

New Jersey's water infrastructure was designed for a climate that no longer exists. The hydrological assumptions embedded in every reservoir, treatment plant, distribution main, and stormwater system — the frequency of extreme storms, the seasonal distribution of precipitation, the extent of coastal flooding, the temperature of source water — have all shifted and are continuing to shift. Four climate mechanisms are stressing New Jersey's water system simultaneously: intensifying extreme precipitation events that overwhelm stormwater and combined sewer infrastructure; extended droughts that reduce reservoir storage and groundwater levels; sea level rise that is accelerating saltwater intrusion into coastal aquifers; and rising source water temperatures that fuel harmful algal blooms and increase disinfection byproduct formation in drinking water treatment plants.

The saltwater intrusion story is particularly urgent for South Jersey: Cape May County has documented measured saltwater encroachment into its freshwater aquifer. Barrier island communities face a thinning freshwater lens. Private well users in the most exposed coastal communities face the prospect of their drinking water supply failing without the state assistance that would help them adapt. And the storm resilience picture remains deeply concerning: most New Jersey water utilities remain significantly underprepared for a major storm, with backup power sized for 72-hour outages in a world where restoration after major storms can take weeks, and no state requirement to conduct or submit climate vulnerability assessments.

• 8.1NJ's water infrastructure was built for a climate that no longer exists
• 8.2Saltwater intrusion is creeping into South Jersey's drinking water — and it's accelerating
• 8.3When the next big storm hits NJ, is your water system ready? Most aren't.

9. Agricultural runoff and the Delaware River watershed

Every spring, nitrogen and phosphorus from South Jersey's agricultural fields begin their invisible journey toward the Delaware River — leaching through sandy soils, traveling through drainage ditches, accumulating in streams, feeding algal blooms in tidal estuaries, and ultimately reaching the drinking water intakes of communities that supply water to approximately 15 million people. Agricultural runoff is the most significant remaining source of nutrient pollution in many of New Jersey's waterways. It is also the least regulated, protected by Clean Water Act exemptions that have shielded agricultural nonpoint sources from the permit-based accountability that governs every other significant pollution source.

The contrast is stark: a factory whose nitrogen discharge is a fraction of a large farm's annual watershed contribution faces an NPDES permit, enforceable discharge limits, public reporting, and enforcement exposure. The farm faces none of these things. Article 2 of this series examines in detail why this regulatory asymmetry exists, what 50 years of failed reform attempts look like, and what the Chesapeake Bay restoration program and the EU Nitrates Directive demonstrate about what is actually achievable with stronger regulatory frameworks. The conservation practices that work — cover crops that can reduce nitrate leaching by 30 to 90 percent, vegetated buffer strips that intercept runoff before it reaches streams, precision nutrient management that reduces fertilizer applications without reducing crop yields — are not mysteries. The obstacles to universal adoption are financial and political, not technical. Making farmers genuine partners in clean water, rather than treating them as adversaries, is the approach that NJ Clean Stream is committed to.

• 9.1South Jersey farms are fertilizing the Delaware River — and downstream cities are drinking it
• 9.2Why agricultural runoff is regulated far more leniently than industrial discharge — and why that needs to change
• 9.3Cover crops, buffer strips, and precision fertilizing — how NJ farmers can be part of the solution