‘Bad comedy show’: Mayors blast Trenton Water Works as ice jams cripple plant again
More than 200,000 Mercer County customers of Trenton Water Works are now under a state-mandated water conservation advisory after another breakdown at the utility’s treatment plant.
The latest failure has prompted mayors from three surrounding towns to look into how they can leave Trenton Water Works in the future.
State regulators said the plant was forced to shut down for three hours in recent days after ice particles from the Delaware River clogged an intake pipe at the Route 29 facility just north of the Calhoun Street Bridge.
It was the second time in less than 12 months that the filtration plant was crippled due to the buildup of tiny frozen particles known as frazil ice. Last January, residents in Trenton and four surrounding communities were forced to boil water after a similar ice jam that lasted weeks.
Almost a year later, the water utility has yet to explain why the intake system, installed just two years ago at a cost of $9 million, broke down or what steps could be taken to prevent further failures. A report issued by the state criticized Trenton Water for failing to adequately maintain the system.
But Trenton officials, including Mayor W. Reed Gusciora, said the fault lies with the engineers who installed it.
“The state ordered us to put this system in, they used their engineers to install it, and now they’re trying to blame us,” Gusciora said during a public tour of the plant last month. “This is not our fault.”
The dispute over the failing intake is only the latest in a series of flash points that have emerged in recent months between Trenton Water and state environmental regulators, who have directly overseen the water plant since 2022.
In June, Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette pulled a surprise inspection at the plant and later said the facility was in imminent threat of collapse. LaTourette later called for Trenton to share governing control of the plant with suburban towns — Hamilton, Lawrence, Hopewell and Ewing — that now comprise 55% of the utility’s customer base.
LaTourette’s actions came after a series of independent consultant reports documented deep-seated dysfunction at the utility, from spotty water treatment to poor bill collection and the lack of qualified personnel to outright corruption. The consultants found decades worth of deferred maintenance and called for more than $100 million in immediate and other emergency work.
In response to the most recent intake failure, the state on Dec. 12 issued a letter ordering Trenton Water to alert customers to save water for essential uses only.
“The frazil ice conditions continue to demonstrate that the intake is a critical point of failure that must continue to be addressed as an emergency,” wrote Kristin Tedesco, the DEP’s assistant director of water supply and geoscience.
Tedesco also ordered the utility to provide daily updates on the status of all system interconnections and the level of the city’s reservoir, which had dropped to unacceptably low levels following the ice jam and several water main breaks. An ongoing project to clean dirt from the intake system will now be postponed until March and warmer weather, when ice is no longer a threat, according to the letter.
On Thursday, Trenton Water issued a conservation notice to its customers that alluded to “cold weather impacts” but did not disclose the latest intake failure. The notice urged customers to avoid washing cars, watering lawns, or running partially loaded dishwashers and washing machines.
“Cold weather impacts the performance of our water infrastructure, and we are ready to address any operational issues,” said Sean Semple, director of the city’s Department of Water and Sewer, which operates Trenton Water Works. “Although there is no disruption to treatment or distribution, freezing temperatures and prolonged cold weather conditions affect TWW’s water filtration plant’s ability to pump water from the supercooled Delaware River and water mains and service lines in our 683-mile distribution system.”
Mayors call for breakup
Ewing Mayor Bert Steinmann, Hopewell Township Mayor Courtney Peters-Manning and Hamilton Mayor Jeff Martin issued a joint statement about the conservation notice on Thursday evening.
“If it did not have real-world impacts, we would think this is a bad comedy show,” they wrote. “Under their current leadership, TWW has failed time and time again. TWW has had roughly one year to figure out its issues as it relates to frazil ice, which causes a decrease in the water supply. If we weren’t already worried about brown water or legionella, now we again must worry if we even have any water.”
The mayors called for action by members of the New Jersey Legislature in Districts 14 and 15 to introduce a bill to amend the Water Infrastructure Protection Act to allow the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to be the agency that determines whether a water system faces severe conditions that threaten the water supply.
“If the people who are failing to lead are the only ones allowed to determine if a system should be reformed, the cycle of incompetence will only continue,” the mayors wrote.
The mayors also said that in response to the repeated failures of Trenton Water Works, they will work with the state to explore whether they can create their own separate water utility and “permanently divorce ourselves of TWW’s incompetence.”
Trenton Water Works customers have been told to report any main breaks or water emergencies to the utility’s hotline at 609-989-3222.
Reporter Krystal Knapp contributed to this report.
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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.