Groundwater polluted, Lambertville residents at risk, but help from State of New Jersey may be years away

LAMBERTVILLE – Residents here will have to wait until next year — or longer — before the state can trace the source of groundwater contamination that’s fouled scores of wells in the city and neighboring West Amwell Township.

State environmental officials say it could take up to two years to investigate a pair of sites that are suspected sources of so-called forever chemicals, or PFAS, that have turned up in wells at levels more than 10 times the limit set under federal and state law.

Both of the sites, an abandoned landfill and a former factory that used Teflon to make machine parts, are located in the Connaught Hill neighborhood. The 12-acre warren of modest homes historically was home to racial minorities and the transient poor in this Hunterdon County community on the Delaware River.

Even if the state eventually pinpoints a pollution source on Connaught Hill, there is no guarantee that a cleanup will take place anytime soon. State officials say they first need to find and compel a “responsible party” to remediate polluted soil and groundwater.

“If the responsible party does not implement the remediation, the DEP may conduct the remediation using public funds,” according to a nine-page “update” the agency released earlier this week to The Jersey Vindicator.

The DEP release confirms what residents have long suspected, that the old municipal landfill on Connaught Hill was never properly closed, capped, or remediated in any way. There are no state records documenting what kind of waste was dumped at the property or how long it was in use. A public records request by The Jersey Vindicator for such records yielded nothing.

While the state claims the landfill was officially closed in 1960, reports in local newspapers available online show that Lambertville was using city trucks to dump municipal waste at the site as late as 1963. At that time, jettisoned car tires and construction debris formed mountains of refuse that routinely caught fire and drew complaints from the state Department of Health, the reports show.

Connaught Hill residents collected more than 2,000 abandoned tires during a recent community cleanup day.

The new information released by the DEP also confirms that Lambertville officials knew about spreading PFAS contamination on Connaught Hill for months, yet failed to notify the state about the budding crisis. Officials from neighboring West Amwell were the first to alert environmental regulators on Sept. 23 of last year, according to the DEP.

At the time, seven wells in Lambertville and nearby sections of West Amwell had tested positive for PFAS contamination, and residents were drinking bottled water for weeks. Connaught Hill residents say they reported contaminated wells to Lambertville Mayor Andrew Nowick as early as June 2024, but he declined to take the issue to the state, telling residents they should instead call the Hunterdon County Health Department.

“Despite all the concern we had as test results showed there was a real problem, the mayor had no interest in alerting the state,” said Shaun Ellis, a longtime Lambertville resident who was the first to discover his well was tainted with chemicals. “I’ve been living on the hill for years, raising a family. How long were we drinking bad water and never knew it?”

The day after West Amwell alerted the state about the tainted wells, top DEP officials came to Lambertville to award Nowick a trophy for being a local hero in the fight against water pollution.

The “Our Water’s Worth It” award cited Nowick for “the city’s tireless efforts to improve its stormwater management program… and better protect local water bodies.”

Accepting the award from Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette, the mayor talked about the “countless benefits” LaTourette’s agency has bestowed as a clean water “partner” of his city.

“When we remember that communities are interconnected through the health of our waterways, it makes partnerships all the more important,” Nowick said.

Neither Nowick nor LaTourette made any mention of the fact that just a half-mile away on Connaught Hill, astronomical levels of PFAS compounds were turning up in residents’ well water. LaTourette did not respond to several requests by The Jersey Vindicator for an interview that were made through the DEP’s media relations office.

Nowick has declined to make extensive comments on the plight of Connaught Hill, citing pending litigation: Several dozen residents of the neighborhood, which straddles the municipal border between Lambertville and West Amwell, have filed tort claims preserving their right to sue for damages connected to the contamination.

Nowick did not respond to a request to comment for this story.

“The record is clear: the state and the mayor of this town are more interested in serving developers and business interests than truly protecting the air and water of New Jersey,” said former NJ Sierra Club President Jeff Tittel, who lives in Lambertville. “Over the years, the state has gradually eroded enforcement and treated polluters like clients. What’s happening in Lambertville is the inevitable result.”

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are industrial-grade compounds used in many consumer products, including medical supplies, non-stick pans, and flame-resistant textiles. They are believed to cause a variety of health problems and reproductive issues, including cancer.

Scientists say there are no acceptable levels of the substances in drinking water, and limits set by the state and federal governments are measured in parts per trillion. Several public water systems in New Jersey have installed expensive filtration systems to remove the chemicals from the drinking supply.

So far, 71 of 74 wells tested on Connaught Hill and neighboring Cottage Hill have tested positive for excessive levels of PFAS substances. Most of the test data was collected in private tests paid for via a community fundraiser last fall. Fourteen well tests conducted by the state in December all turned up positive for PFAS. Another round of state testing is scheduled for late June.

“I’ve been living on the hill for years, raising a family. How long were we drinking bad water and never knew it?”

Shaun Ellis, longtime Lambertville resident

Residents began drinking bottled water almost one year ago after the initial reports of contamination. Since then, many have installed filtration systems that are being paid for by the state.

Reports of cancers and other serious illnesses on Connaught Hill have multiplied in recent months as the news of widespread contamination spread. Several teenagers on the hill have recently undergone treatment, including surgery, for maladies that include testicular cancer and ulcerative colitis. Both have been linked to PFAS.

Using test results and mapping software, Connaught Hill residents have created a color-coded map of their neighborhood. It shows that wells closest to the suspect sites have the highest levels of PFAS contamination as it spreads across the hill and into areas below it.

Karen Atwood, a grandmother who has lived on the hill for decades, shares a home there with her mother, her daughter, and her four grandchildren. A two-time cancer survivor, Atwood says her property registers some of the highest concentrations of forever chemicals found in the neighborhood.

“I worry about the young people in my family, the children,” she said in an interview last month.

Despite the state investigation and mounting evidence of widespread groundwater contamination, developers continue pressing to build a high-density housing project on the hill.

The builder, K. Hovnanian Homes, is seeking to build up to 200 homes on the 14-acre site that sits adjacent to both the old landfill and the machine shop, which closed in 1988 amid the state’s discovery that the company was dumping industrial chemicals into floor drains and septic tanks onsite. The property was eventually remediated according to state standards, but at the time, PFAS chemicals were not a known environmental concern.

Environmental tests done by the developer on the site have not been released to the public. In a letter to a concerned Connaught Hill resident last June, Mayor Nowick revealed that a Hovnanian environmental consultant had found “contaminants of concern” in shallow soils around the building, which had housed the Lambertville High School until 1960.

“Removal and off-site disposal of the impacted materials and soils will be required as part of our site redevelopment, but there is no impact to groundwater,” Nowick wrote. There was no mention of any testing done on or around the old dump.

The town’s closed-door negotiations with Hovnanian have infuriated residents across Lambertville, who say the plan allows for unsightly construction on steep slopes above the city and calls for acres of clear-cutting that will worsen the city’s tendency to flood during extended rainstorms.

Creeks running through town overflowed during recent hurricanes, knocking some houses off their foundations and flooding residential enclaves adjacent to the Delaware & Raritan Canal. Many houses in parts of the town have been raised and retrofitted with stilts.

The record is clear: the state and the mayor of this town are more interested in serving developers and business interests than truly protecting the air and water of New Jersey.

Jeff Tittel, Lambertville resident and former NJ Sierra Club director

Late last year, amid the growing public concern about the Hovnanian plan, the town council voted to strip the developer’s designation as its official development partner. The move could mean a legal challenge from Hovnanian, as well as further delays in the town’s abortive effort to create 40 affordable housing units that had been a component of the Connaught Hill plan.

Hovnanian is seeking to intervene in a Superior Court action brought by fair housing advocates who are pushing Lambertville to fulfill its obligation under the state’s Mt. Laurel directive.

Documents in the court case reviewed by The Jersey Vindicator show that Lambertville officials had few serious reservations about Connaught Hill’s environmental land mines as they pushed the development during two years of negotiations with Hovnanian. Citing the city’s own experts, a recent Hovnanian legal filing shows that Lambertville had concluded by last fall — months after PFAS was discovered — that the site was good for housing.

“The City’s own planner stated … on September 9, 2024, that the project … is ‘suitable, available, developable and approvable,'” according to the court filing. “The City points to no engineering study, planning report or any other evidence to suggest that now all of a sudden, steep slopes, stormwater or environmental contamination somehow serve as a permanent barrier to the [project].”

Connaught Hill residents who reviewed the affordable housing case in recent months say they were shocked to discover that the court knew little about spreading contamination across the project site.

In recent weeks, residents sent dozens of letters to the court detailing their plight. Beth O’Brien, a Connaught Hill resident who installed a water filtration system after discovering high PFAS levels in her well water, delivered many of the letters personally to the Hunterdon County court clerk in Flemington.

“I think they were genuinely surprised to see this level of concern,” O’Brien said. “How do you even begin to think it’s suitable to build a housing development near a landfill where this kind of contamination is showing up?”

Editor’s note: Residents who live in the Connaught Hill area who would like their well sampled at no cost should contact Greg Broslawski at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Community Relations to schedule an appointment at (609) 940-4775, or email gregory.broslawski@dep.nj.gov.