Passaic Valley Water Commission lawsuit exposes years of mismanagement and regulatory failure

A proposed settlement could leave northern New Jersey residents waiting until 2054 for the utility to cover its remaining open reservoirs.

The federal lawsuit against the Passaic Valley Water Commission is not just about a water utility. It is an indictment of a system that has allowed a basic public health requirement to go unenforced for two decades.

The commission serves roughly 800,000 people across northern New Jersey. Yet it has continued operating three uncovered reservoirs containing finished drinking water: the Stanley Levine Reservoir in Paterson and the Great Notch and New Street reservoirs in Woodland Park. That means water that has already been treated is put back into the open air, where it can be exposed to wildlife, bird and animal waste, stormwater, and other contaminants before being delivered to customers.

This isn’t a paperwork violation. This is drinking water sitting outside, vulnerable to pollution and bacteria.

The federal government and the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office are now taking the commission to court over alleged violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act’s Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule.

Decades of delay

This should have been resolved long before 2009. The commission had many years — decades, in fact — to come up with a plan and fix this problem before the federal order was even issued. The rule requiring finished-water reservoirs to be covered was first proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Instead, what we are seeing is not a comedy of errors. It is a tragedy of mismanagement and incompetence. The rules were on the books, the problem was known, and the public was left waiting.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection entered into an administrative consent order with the commission in 2009 and established a compliance process. Yet more than 17 years later, the problem remains unresolved.

A consent order is not supposed to be a permission slip for delay. It is supposed to be a mandate for action. At some point, we have to ask how many chances a utility gets before enforcement actually means enforcement.

The Levine Reservoir became a case study in delay

Part of the problem was the commission’s decision to pursue massive replacement tanks at the Levine site.

The original proposal involved large, expensive concrete storage tanks, with the three-reservoir project initially estimated at roughly $135 million. At Levine alone, the project is now expected to cost about $42 million.

The project also became entangled in years of historic preservation reviews, community opposition, design changes, federal negotiations, and litigation over the construction contract. The Levine Reservoir dates to 1885 and is part of the historic landscape associated with Paterson’s Great Falls. Federal reviews continued for years before a scaled-down mitigation approach, which is still overbuilt, was approved in 2020.

After all that, construction of the replacement tanks at Levine finally began in June 2025, with completion now expected in 2027.

Nearly two decades to cover a reservoir is not infrastructure planning. It is infrastructure paralysis. We need safe drinking water, not a monument to bureaucratic delay.

Now the deadline could stretch to 2054

The latest proposed settlement makes the situation even more disturbing.

Instead of requiring immediate compliance, the proposed federal consent decree could give the commission until 2054 to fully address the remaining open reservoirs.

That would mean another 28 years of delay, and 45 years since the 2009 consent order.

The year 2054? That’s not a compliance schedule. That’s a generational time capsule. The children drinking this water today could have grandchildren by the time the state and the commission finish the job.

We cannot kick a public health problem down the road until another generation has to kick it again. The risks to public health alone demand action.

The proposed settlement includes a $132,500 civil penalty and a court-enforced schedule for bringing the system into compliance. A court-enforced schedule is stronger than another administrative promise, but the public still needs to know why the work would be allowed to take until 2054.

If the technology, engineering, and construction solutions are available, why should the public have to wait another generation? If there are legitimate engineering reasons the work cannot be completed sooner, they need to be clearly explained to the public, not buried in a consent decree.

Even more troubling are provisions critics say could limit the commission’s legal exposure if customers become sick from problems associated with the system.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t leave drinking water vulnerable for decades and then try to build a legal shield around the utility. The public shouldn’t be left holding the water bill — and the health risk — while the utility gets a liability umbrella.

A consent decree resolving the government’s enforcement claims is one thing. Giving a utility broad protection from future claims by people who may allege they were harmed is something very different. The public deserves to know exactly what legal rights would be preserved and what rights, if any, would be surrendered under the proposed agreement.

If people become sick because of contamination associated with the violations at issue in this case, they should not have to discover after the fact that a settlement negotiated between government agencies and the utility has restricted their ability to seek justice. The public should not be asked to surrender rights it never agreed to give up.

Public health cannot be put on hold

Uncovered reservoirs create a pathway for microbial contamination from animal and bird waste, stormwater, and other environmental sources. Among the pathogens of concern are Cryptosporidium and Giardia, parasites that can cause serious gastrointestinal illness and pose greater risks to young children, older adults, and people with compromised immune systems.

The danger is not theoretical. During Hurricane Ida in 2021, stormwater contributed to serious water-quality problems and a prolonged water advisory.

There are also concerns about lead. Open-reservoir conditions can interfere with corrosion-control strategies, including the use of orthophosphate to reduce the leaching of lead from aging water mains and plumbing.

So we have a ridiculous chemical Catch-22. We know we have old infrastructure and concerns about lead, yet the system has been allowed to remain in a configuration that makes corrosion control more difficult.

The Passaic River, which I call “the DeNile River,” receives discharges from close to 100 sewage treatment plants. At the commission’s Little Falls water supply intake on the Passaic River, wastewater discharges can make up more than 90% of the river during the summer. Yet people are still drinking that water.

Under low-flow conditions, the river becomes heavily concentrated with nitrogen, phosphorus, and other contaminants that fuel algae blooms, reduce oxygen levels, create foul odors, and threaten drinking water supplies.

That isn’t protecting public health. That’s gambling with it.

The Department of Environmental Protection needs to answer for this failure

The commission deserves scrutiny, but the Department of Environmental Protection does, too.

This is also a failure of state oversight. The department knew about this in 2009. It entered into a consent order and established deadlines. Yet here we are, more than 17 years later, with the federal government having to go to court.

Where was the urgency? Where was the enforcement? How many extensions and second chances does a public utility get?

New Jersey has developed an environmental Stockholm syndrome in which regulators become so accustomed to dealing with chronic violators that they begin acting like the violator’s lawyer instead of the public’s watchdog.

A consent order without consequences is just a suggestion on letterhead.

Environmental justice is part of this story

The commission serves communities including Paterson, Passaic, and Clifton, where many residents are working-class people and people of color.

Environmental justice means people in Paterson and Passaic deserve the same level of protection as people in the wealthiest suburbs. If an affluent suburban water system left finished drinking water sitting uncovered for 20 years, I doubt regulators would be telling residents to be patient.

Clean water cannot be a luxury reserved for certain ZIP codes.

Stop treating the Passaic River like New Jersey’s industrial sewer

This lawsuit also exposes a larger failure in how New Jersey protects its drinking water sources.

We cannot keep treating the Passaic River watershed like an industrial dumping ground and then act surprised when drinking water systems are vulnerable.

The Passaic receives pollution from wastewater facilities, stormwater runoff, industrial sites, and contaminated tributaries. Combined sewer overflows are another problem. When it rains, raw and partially treated sewage can end up near water supply intakes.

Water treatment is the last line of defense, not an excuse for upstream pollution. If we keep polluting the source, we force water utilities to spend more and more money trying to clean up a mess that should never have been created in the first place.

New Jersey needs stronger watershed protections, stormwater controls, wetland and stream corridor protections, and real accountability for polluters.

$132,500 doesn’t match 17 years of failure

The proposed settlement includes a $132,500 civil penalty. That is a slap on the wrist compared with the magnitude and duration of this failure. If you violate drinking water protections for nearly two decades, the penalty cannot simply become the cost of doing business.

A penalty should be a deterrent, not an operating expense.

The settlement must include enforceable deadlines, independent oversight, transparent public reporting, and meaningful consequences for missing milestones. The court should demand a schedule that reflects the urgency of protecting drinking water, with milestones requiring the work to be completed in years, not generations, from now.

No more moving the goalposts. No more kicking the can. No more consent orders becoming permission slips for delay. New Jersey has already had 17 years. The public shouldn’t have to give it another 28.

If the commission can’t do the job, New Jersey must step in

This raises a fundamental question: If a public water utility cannot comply with federal drinking water law after nearly two decades, how long should the state allow it to continue operating without stronger intervention?

New Jersey should be prepared to impose stronger state oversight and, if necessary, take control of the system to ensure the public is protected. There needs to be an independent investigation into the commission and the utter failure to protect its customers’ drinking water. The investigation should examine possible malfeasance, incompetence, and financial irregularities.

Drinking water is not a business convenience. It is a public trust. The people of northern New Jersey should not have to wait until 2054 for the government to do what it should have done years ago.

This is an alarm bell, not just a lawsuit

The federal lawsuit should be a wake-up call for the commission, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Attorney General’s Office, and every water utility in New Jersey.

Cover the reservoirs. Treat the water. Meet the deadlines. Protect the public. And stop kicking the can down the road. After 17 years, that can isn’t simply being kicked anymore. It is being kicked into another generation’s backyard.

Clean drinking water cannot be something we promise tomorrow. It has to be protected today. When it comes to drinking water, nearly two decades of delay isn’t an administrative problem. It is a public health failure.