A year into a federal lawsuit over lead in Newark’s water — and a week after a judge asked if they even existed — the state has produced documents showing that the treatment which ultimately failed to protect public health was in fact approved more than two decades ago.
On Thursday, state lawyers representing the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection filed more than 400 pages of documents detailing approvals made by the state in the 1990s for corrosion control treatment plans used by the two water treatment systems that provide drinking water to Newark and some surrounding municipalities.
The documents were requested by the Natural Resources Defense Council as part of its 2018 lawsuit against Newark and the NJDEP, but the state had until now failed to provide the paperwork.
Corrosion control is at the center of Newark’s water crisis and the main reason that lead levels spiked starting in 2017. The treatment is supposed to prevent lead from old pipes that connect underground water mains to homes from leaching into the water. But at the Pequannock plant, which is operated by the city, the treatment that had been in place since 1997 failed, putting 18,000 homes at risk.
The Pequannock plant pumps water to the South and West wards and parts of the North and Central Wards. Belleville, Bloomfield, Nutley, Elizabeth and Pequannock Township also buy water from this plant.
In May, the plant began using a new corrosion control treatment method. It should start taking effect in several months.
The rest of Newark’s water comes from the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission’s Wanaque treatment plant. Corrosion treatment at the Wanaque plant is working, and is still the same method that has been in use since the 1990s.
NJDEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe told NJ Advance Media on Friday the agency has old paper records that are stored in warehouses, which makes it difficult to retrieve documents quickly.
“It’s not easy when you’re going back years ago. We’re working hard on doing that,” she said, adding that the agency’s focus remained on getting Newark’s water crisis resolved.
In an Aug. 16 hearing, U.S. District Judge Esther Salas asked a lawyers representing the NJDEP if such documents existed. The lawyers told her they had no record of any documents proving that the state had designated corrosion control treatment plans for either Newark system.
That exchange came during a hearing to determine whether or not the city would be required to expand its bottle water distribution program to pregnant women and child in the Wanaque area. Salas still has not decided.
The potential ramifications of missing documents would’ve raised serious questions over the NJDEP’s oversight of drinking water serving hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans, according to the NRDC.
Erik Olson, the NRDC’s senior director of health and food, said even the long delay in producing the documents was troublesome.
“It’s just another indication of the disarray at the state level that they can’t even find some basic documents for the largest city in New Jersey,” Olson said. “It’s like, man, if you can’t find it for Newark, what of the rest of the state? It really does make me wonder what’s going on if the state is unable to find something as basic as that.”
Olson added that the state’s lawyers were unable to find documents proving the state designated the necessary water quality parameters for the Pequannock’s previous corrosion control treatment to work, according to the new filing. The same documents were also missing for the Wanaque system.
Those parameters set guidelines for various parts of the treatment process, including what the pH, or acidity of the water needs to be. A study commissioned by a Newark consultant determined that drops in pH that began fluctuating around 2012 -- when city water operators were trying to deal with a separate problem -- led to the failure of corrosion control in the Pequannock system.
Read more of NJ.com’s coverage of New Jersey water issues here.
Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.
Michael Sol Warren may be reached at mwarren@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MSolDub. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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