New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s big plans to revamp his state’s aging water and sewage system is a likely bellwether for the challenges and regulatory fights to come as other states look to overhaul their decades-old infrastructure.
New Jersey faces many of the problems that other states do from a vast pipeline system built in the 1950s, with few upgrades since then. Add to that an increasing population, and what emerges is a water system in a serious state of disrepair, according to the National Association of Water Companies, which represents water utilities.
Nearly half of the nation’s water pipes are “in poor shape,” requiring well over $500 billion in repairs over the next two decades, the group’s Water Is Your Business report says.
On top of that are more stringent environmental regulations that don’t always account for growth and development, according to state groups.
The Christie administration’s master plan seeks to strike a balance between strong environmental and water-quality standards and building infrastructure to attract development, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. It also is trying to promote better relationships between the state’s regulators and the towns and counties under them.
“Through these changes, [the department] will be able to work collaboratively — not as adversaries — with county and local planning agencies, who know their communities best, to achieve the shared goal of sound planning policies that protect the ecologically sensitive areas that ought to be protected and direct development to where it is appropriate,” said Dan Kennedy, the agency’s assistant commissioner for water resources management.
But not everyone is thrilled, and environmental activists are pressuring the Christie administration to roll back its plans.
They are even asking the Environmental Protection Agency to block his environmental agency from implementing the plan, citing concerns that it would contaminate the state’s drinking water. So far, the EPA has given the state a list of protections it wants to see in the final rule.
“We believe that these rules will add more pollution into impaired waterways,” forcing contaminants to levels that are far above those recommended federally for safe drinking water, said Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club’s New Jersey chapter.
“Our concern is that many of our rivers such as the Passaic and Raritan could be impacted by this proposal, as well as many lakes because it will add development in environmentally sensitive areas leading to more sprawl and pollution.”
The Christie administration’s water quality plan, which was proposed last year, looks to reverse former Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine’s program that placed “an extreme burden on the counties” to develop the expertise needed to plan and develop water and sewage lines, when the state’s own Department of Environmental Protection already had the resources, said Lawrence Hajna, spokesman for the state’s environmental agency.
The Christie plan “doesn’t throw all the burden on the counties,” which brings infrastructure planning to a crawl, he said. Environmentalists “want to make things as complicated as possible so nothing happens. That’s the goal.”
Besides pressing the EPA to block the plan, the Sierra Club’s campaign is taking the form of detailed comments to the state on how the Christie administration can make the plan more environmentally friendly.
The safety of drinking water has grabbed the national spotlight with the lead-contaminated water in Flint, Mich. Tittel said New Jersey also is facing a drinking water crisis, as the waterways and streams it draws its water supply from are becoming increasingly contaminated.
Hajna says there’s no connection between Flint and New Jersey. The environmentalists “lack a fundamental understanding of what we aim to accomplish and why we were doing this,” he said.
“We aren’t proposing to eliminate water quality. We want to strike a balance and that appropriate protections are applied to our environmentally sensitive areas.”
