In Bloomfield, water worries have been around for years -- but now they’re overflowing, with the town taking steps to install new infrastructure that will allow it to pull out from the troubled Newark water system, which has attracted national headlines for its ongoing lead water crisis.
Newark sells drinking water to multiple other towns including Bloomfield, a suburb of the Brick City that is home to about 50,000 people. For five straight six-month-long monitoring periods, Newark has had lead levels above the federal standard in its water. In that same time period, Bloomfield has dealt with the same lead problem.
So when news broke earlier this month that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had requested that bottled water be distributed in Newark — in response to doubts about the effectiveness of 38,000 PUR filters that had been previously handed out to city residents — a new wave of worry swept through Bloomfield.
The same filters had been given to residents in the township.
Bloomfield officials responded by testing five of the filters that they had distributed. All of the tests showed that the Bloomfield filters were working as intended.
Still, the township received 200 requests for lead test kits in the past week, compared to about 30 requests in the six months prior, Mayor Michael Venezia said at a community meeting Monday night.
“This was just another incident that gets people all worked up because right away, people think we’re Flint, Michigan,” Venezia said of the EPA’s bottled water request. “We’re not Flint, Michigan. Newark is not Flint, Michigan.”
Despite that insistence, Venezia told residents Monday that Bloomfield’s leaders are in the midst of switching over to the North Jersey Water Supply Commission, which distributes water from the Wanaque Reservoir throughout the region.
But the process to switch suppliers has already taken six years, and will likely take a few more, Venezia said. The township must first build a new pump station to tap into the Wanaque system, and that construction is expected to take at least 18 months.
Once the pump station is in place, Venezia said that 60% of Bloomfield will be drinking Wanaque water. It will take another three years to build a new network of water mains in order to serve the rest of the town, according to the mayor.
Monday night, at least 75 people packed into a hot, crowded room, and even more strained to listen from the hallway. On their way in and out of the forum, residents picked up free water-testing kits and pamphlets about lead.
Some Bloomfield residents said they have had worries since 2016, when Newark’s schools were struck by district-wide lead problems.
Eric Dawson, a Bloomfield resident and community activist, said he has long thought that township officials have failed to address the lead issue with real urgency.
“If you’re getting water from another township, and you noticed that that township shut down 30 schools, and there isn’t like enormous concern about what’s going on, then that’s a problem," Dawson said. "And it seems like there wasn’t enormous concern.”
Newark’s lead problems stem from the city’s struggle to properly treat the corrosiveness of its water, which leads the water to eat away at decades-old lead pipes and fixtures. Those corroding pipes are the source of the lead, not the source water itself, and houses built before 1986 are the most at risk.
Newark’s water department switched to a new corrosion control treatment in May, and the city expects it will take a few months for the new method to be fully effective. But Bloomfield officials said they’ve already seen some improvement, and they’re hopeful that will continue.
Newark is spending $75 million over eight years to replace more than 15,000 lead service lines — the pipes that connect individual properties to the water main — in the city. In Newark’s program, property owners are being asked to pay $1,000 to help with the replacement.
Bloomfield has also been replacing lead service lines, but the township’s program is at no cost to the homeowner, according to Venezia. It is unclear how many lead service lines are currently in use in the town.
In the past year, Bloomfield has replaced 46 lead service lines, and those replacements are made as the lines are found. The Mayor said that the township recently borrowed $1.1 million to continue the line replacement work, and it is still seeking more funding from state and federal sources.
Sergio Saravia, a Bloomfield resident of six years and the father of two young daughters, said he was glad that the town held the forum. But he warned that he and his neighbors will be watching Bloomfield’s progress, and working to hold township officials accountable.
“Elections are coming," Saravia said. "That’s our power. If they’re not going to do the job for us, we’re just going to vote them out.”
Read more of NJ.com’s coverage of New Jersey water issues here.
Michael Sol Warren may be reached at mwarren@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MSolDub. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.
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