On the brink of collapse: New regional utility proposed as solution to Trenton’s water woes
Trenton’s water utility, now under state supervision following decades of dysfunction that routinely exposed more than 200,000 Mercer County residents to dangerous drinking water, should be removed from the city’s control and replaced with a regional agency.
That’s the major recommendation of a 320-page state report released Monday that describes an agency teetering on insolvency under incompetent workers, unqualified managers, and indifferent leadership that flouted clean water laws for years.
“Trenton Water Works suffers from historic neglect and underinvestment,” the report concludes, “resulting in an extremely high risk of systemic failure that Trenton alone cannot repair.”
The report, prepared for the Department of Environmental Protection by independent consultants H2M of Melville, New York, is based on a 14-month study of Trenton Water’s personnel practices, treatment operation, and finances. The authors interviewed scores of employees, lawmakers, and other public officials.
Leaders in several Mercer County communities, which rely on the 33 million gallons of drinking water provided daily by Trenton, embraced the report and said they were already making plans for a suburban takeover of the utility.
In a joint statement, the mayors of Hamilton, Hopewell, Lawrence, and Ewing townships rejected privatizing Trenton Water but said chronic problems with drinking water could only be remedied by joint ownership of the utility. The agency has drawn and filtered water from the Delaware River for more than a century, pumping it through 683 miles of pipes serving Trenton and its neighbors.
“The status quo is not sustainable,” the mayors said, pointing out that some 55% of all Trenton Water users now reside outside the city. “A new public utility, with governance that allows for greater … collaboration across municipalities, is a necessary step forward.”
The joint statement was also signed by Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora, who was elected in 2018 promising to reform Trenton Water. The mayors pledged to work together to create the new regional agency and provide safer, more reliable drinking water. Over the next six months, they said they would also hammer out “an accounting of the costs that will be needed to fairly compensate the City of Trenton for its asset.”
“Together, we aim to restore the public’s faith and confidence in this new entity,” the mayors said.
The suburban mayors, frustrated by the steady stream of service interruptions and drinking water advisories that have worried residents across much of Mercer County, have for years sought accountability from the Trenton utility, even taking the city to court.
Hamilton Mayor Jeff Martin said many people in his community are afraid to use the water in any way and have taken to bathing their babies in bottled water.
“A lot of people won’t give it to their cats and dogs,” Martin said in a recent interview.
Any regional water facility would have to take on the financial burden of righting a public utility that officials say needs hundreds of millions of dollars in urgent repairs and upgrades to its intake plant on the Delaware River, its uncovered urban reservoir, and its aging mains and pumping equipment.
Trenton Water officials estimate they will need more than $1 billion in the next 15 years to bring the utility into compliance with state standards and carry out long-delayed capital projects.
In 2022, after an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease traced to the deficient Trenton Water Works reservoir, the utility was compelled to submit to state monitoring. Despite state oversight, Trenton Water has continued to chalk up high-profile failings that have angered the public.
Last year, the utility admitted that a rogue employee managed to sit at home collecting overtime for a year while falsifying water quality sampling data. Residents continued to be pelted with official notices that dangerous levels of chemical byproducts were accumulating in some areas, despite years of orders from the state demanding that Trenton Water upgrade flushing equipment.
The utility also acknowledged in late 2023 that it would probably miss a 2031 state deadline to replace lead water lines throughout its service area. Officials said they still needed some $500 million to complete the project. Complicating the project was the discovery that a contractor hired to do some of the work had been indicted for fraud in a similar project in Newark.
With the help of the state, Trenton Water is inspecting curbside water lines across the city to determine if lead replacement work actually took place. Federal officials contacted the city last year to alert them to the possible scam, the water agency said.
In early January, the utility announced that a $9 million water intake system installed just two years ago under state supervision had failed. Residents were placed under a water conservation order as the city undertook emergency measures. Trenton Water was forced to import fresh water through an interconnection with a neighboring water utility.
As divers plumbed the Delaware River to explore the cause of the malfunction, Mayor Gusciora said the new system appeared to be blocked by “unexpected ice chunks” in a river that routinely freezes in the winter months. He later said the utility was “adjusting the frequency” of using high-tech air compressors built into the system to break up slushy ice that can clog water intake.
Michael Walker, a spokesman for Trenton Water, said in an interview Monday that crews have now installed emergency diesel pumps that allow river water to be drawn through the old intake, essentially bypassing the malfunctioning new multimillion-dollar system. Although some water continues to flow through the new intake, he said, the emergency system will remain in place for the near future.
“As the weather warms up, we’ll be able to investigate more fully what is going on,” Walker said.
Although the new study of Trenton Water echoes themes that have emerged in state and federal investigations, as well as recent media reports, it reveals new details that depict a public agency on the brink of failure. Some examples:
- The water main distribution system has more than 371 dead-end pipes and other mains configured in a way that allows stagnant water where toxic disinfectant byproducts can build up.
- Millions of gallons of water every year “go missing,” according to the report, a problem that drains badly needed revenue. The billing and collection system is so flawed, employees say, the agency can only estimate water use for about 25% of all customers. As of September 2023, more than 19,000 customer accounts totaling $18.5 million were more than 120 days delinquent, the study found.
- Chronic money shortages at Trenton Water prevent proper maintenance of water treatment and testing equipment. Lab instruments are aging, outdated, or unreliable. A “large majority” of tasks done by maintenance staff are merely janitorial, such as sweeping floors and mopping bathrooms, according to the report.
- The failure to hire qualified workers is a chronic problem made worse by Trenton’s requirement to fill most jobs with city residents. The report, which recommends ending the requirement, said the lack of skilled workers undermines operations across the board.
The Trenton Water Works has had seven directors in seven years. One leading official, compliance officer Edmund Johnson, is so poorly equipped for employment at the utility that he should be removed, the report recommended.
“Mr. Johnson is unqualified to serve as compliance officer or any other role at Trenton Water Works,” the report said.
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Jeff Pillets is a freelance journalist whose stories have been featured by ProPublica, New Jersey Spotlight News, WNYC-New York Public Radio and The Record. He was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2008 for stories on waste and abuse in New Jersey state government. Contact jeffpillets AT icloud.com.