By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – The Newark Water Department followed most standard customer service procedures when it was informed by some of its customers of a problem earlier this season.
Customers along NWD’s Pequannock Water System – including those in Nutley, Bloomfield and Belleville – began noticing cloudy water coming out of its taps on three days of a seven day period. The calls to the city’s water and sewer utility started that first day.
Newark’s Pequannock and Wanaque water supply systems serve some 400,000 daily customers in New Jersey’s largest city and client municipalities along the way. The Pequannock system also supplies customers in Newark’s North, West, Central and South wards.
Water testers at the department’s Pequannock Treatment Plant in West Milford had meanwhile detected the cloudy water, called turbidity, during routine testing that first day.
NWD, in its explanatory press release, found high readings of 1.1 to 2.11 Nephelometric Turbidity Units from among five samples taken 1-11:30 a.m. the first day. The readings were exceeding the 1.0 NTU threshold set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – and far above the department’s normal .20 NTU readings.
Newark and other water departments are required by the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection to report any water quality standard exceedances to its customers.
The department, having defined the problem, soon traced the problem’s cause to its source on or by the sixth day.
“The turbidity at the treatment plant,” said NWD’s release, “rose rapidly due to an equipment failure of a valve overloading our coagulant chemical treatment plant.”
The failed valve was adding more chemical disinfectant than required, causing the cloudiness. The turbidity is an indication that “disease-causing organisms” that a proper amount of disinfectant would kill were flowing downstream.
NWD employees, after replacing the faulty valve, cleaned the lines feeding the new valve and continued sampling for turbidity, chlorine and coliform. Those levels had returned to normal on the seventh, or last, day.
The department then followed up with an explanatory letter to its customers. The Belleville, Bloomfield and Nutley water departments then relayed that NWD explanation to its customers as advisories.
Nutley and Bloomfield buy some of its water from Newark-Pequannock. Belleville buys all of its water from NWD and five percent of its customers, mostly in its Silver Lake section, also use Newark’s water mains and service lines.
“Our water system recently violated two drinking water requirements,” said the NWD letter. “Although at this time it is not an emergency, as our customers, you have the right to know what happened, what you should do, and what we did (are doing) to correct this situation.
The Bloomfield Water Department, however, posted its advisory on Nov. 2 and Belleville Nov. 9. Nutley notified its 436 households served by Newark Nov. 17.
NWD released its explanatory letter Oct. 28 regarding the cloudiness and its correction found Sept. 20, 25 and 26.
There has been no explanation as of press time from Newark on why it took 32 days to advise the three other departments – or from the other departments another six to 25 days to advise their local customers.
