By Mark Di Ionno
Here is a headline we have yet to see.
“Newark becomes model city for eradicating lead threat in water”
When the city is done replacing all 18,720 lead service lines, it can claim that no city in America has changed as many lines as quickly, through its own financing, with no cost to residents in capital outlay, tax increases or water rate hikes.
And yet …
I recently asked a reporter from a large state media outlet why that story hasn’t been written.
“Because it’s not true,” he said, without hesitation.
It was explained to him that the handful of America cities that even bothered to replace lead lines relied on rate raises, homeowner contribution or federal funding. Newark’s main financing came from state-approved City and Essex County bonds, a reflection of the city’s financial health.
The $120 million county bond will be paid off with a $155 million amended lease agreement between Newark and the Port Authority. Those payments will come over the next 30 years and is essentially money the Port Authority owes the city -- whether lead lines were being replaced or not. That fact didn’t stop one news outlet from reporting that commuters were picking up the lead line tab, fueling the divisive, race-baiting narrative that suburbanites carry the cities on their backs. The story was retracted when the news outlet was confronted with facts.
With that county bond money, Newark now has 20 crews working around the city. They have ripped out 4,300 lead lines since March and are knocking out 85 a day. At that pace, all 18,720 city lead lines will be replaced in 2½ years. Flint, Mich., for example has replaced 9,500 lines in four years and is entering the fifth year of its program.
The inevitable comparisons to Flint came when the city began to hand out bottled water this summer, despite the clear differences. Newark never changed its water supply or cut corrosion control to save money. The city followed all federal EPA and state DEP protocols. Still, the words “poisoned water” and “crisis” dominated headlines. Lost in the hysteria was that Mayor Ras Baraka acted with an over-abundance of caution, after testing of three filters showed lead levels weren’t being reduced as hoped. Further testing of a much larger sample proved the filters were 99% effective when used properly. Those filters – now about 40,000 – were paid for and distributed by the city when the lead exceedances proved not to be anomalies in October of 2018.
Here is another ignored fact: Mayor Baraka has lobbied for solutions to this national infrastructure problem. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Frank Pallone pushed for federal bills to free up $100 million in clean water funds to abate lead in drinking water. President Trump signed the bill in October.
Around the same time, Gov. Phil Murphy proposed a $500 million comprehensive program to replace lead lines throughout the state and to step up lead paint abatement and education.
The irony is that Newark may not get much, if any, of either funding, because it will have solved most, if not all, of its problem before money becomes available.
And yet …
A New York Times reporter went on national TV and said “the NRDC” was the hero of this story, buying into the Natural Resources Defense Council’s self-serving narrative. The NRDC injected itself into the situation and sued the city, demanding oversight of the lead abatement program. But the city already has plenty of government oversight (the EPA and DEP) and it hired CDM Smith, one of the world’s most respected environmental companies. In the 1970s, CDM Smith created the EPA’s first blueprints and standards for the development and maintenance water pollution control plants and has engineered major international infrastructure projects to improve water quality and distribution in places like Colombia and Pakistan.
And yet …
A recent editorial in the Star-Ledger urged Newark to settle with the NRDC, ignoring the warp speed of the lead-line replacements while questioning whether Newark could do the job right without the NRDC’s guidance.
Mayor Baraka talks about inherent “paternalism,” which leads groups like the NRDC to believe minority-run cities can’t fix their own problems -- and they find a complicit partner in some members of the media. Of course, media members will deny inherent biases, but some of their headlines prove differently.
Mark Di Ionno is the interim communications director for the City of Newark and a former Star-Ledger columnist.
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