Photo by Yael Katzwer
After discussing South Orange’s current water issues and plans for the future, village attorney Steven Rother, far left, and village administrator Barry Lewis Jr., far right, yield the floor to New Jersey American Water representatives Nicholas DeVecchis, second from left, and Thomas Shroba, second from right, at the Sept. 15 water supply meeting.
SOUTH ORANGE — South Orange Village held a special public meeting Monday, Sept. 15, at which three options were put forth to the public regarding changes to the village’s water supply. Of the three, only the third option — contracting with a water supplier that is not the East Orange Water Commission — is viable.
To that end, village officials invited representatives from New Jersey American Water, the village’s likely future water supplier, to the meeting, at which approximately 50 audience members heard the ins and outs of NJAW.
A panel, moderated by village President Alex Torpey, consisted of Steven Rother, the village attorney; John Visconi, an associate at Rother’s firm who specializes in land use and local government law; Barry Lewis Jr., the village administrator; Thomas Valenza, a water systems expert; village trustees Walter Clarke and Howard Levison; Nicholas DeVecchis, NJAW’s manager of business development; and Thomas Shroba, NJAW’s senior director of northern operations.
This meeting — and the decision to switch water suppliers — comes near the end of a long road of dissatisfaction with the EOWC, the village’s current water provider.
Even before the EOWC was found to be falsifying water test results, the village had been dissatisfied with its relationship with the water commission with regard to billing issues and how the commission had allegedly ignored capital needs, according to Lewis. In 2012, the village discovered that the EOWC had been falsifying water-test results, reporting lower levels of volatile organic compounds than were actually present in the water.
In 2012, two EOWC executives — former Assistant Executive Director William Mowell and former Executive Director Harry Mansmann — were indicted for falsifying water-test results. As previously reported in the News-Record, Mowell pleaded guilty July 25 to a charge of second-degree conspiracy before Essex County Superior Court Judge Carolyn Wright; Mowell had been indicted Feb. 12, 2013, along with Mansmann, who is now deceased.
According to New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman, Mowell pleaded guilty to a charge that he had conspired to engage in a pattern of official misconduct, tamper with public records, and violate both the New Jersey Safe Drinking Water Act and the New Jersey Water Pollution Control Act. Under the plea agreement, the state will recommend that Mowell be sentenced to three years in state prison. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 7.
Additionally, the EOWC has had some issues providing the necessary quantity of water to South Orange and has needed to use interconnections with Newark Water and NJAW to supplement the water supply.
As a result, the village contended that the commission was in breach of its contract; however, the village’s ability to terminate its contract with the water commission was “somewhat hampered,” according to Lewis, because the EOWC repaired many of the reported problems, following New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection standards.
Because of the legal difficulties entailed by exiting the 20-year contract with the water commission, the village plans to ride out its contract with the EOWC until its expiration Dec. 31, 2016.
Although the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the village’s water-supply options moving forward, village officials stressed that the water is safe to drink. The water has at no point reached a VOC level that made it unsafe to drink, according to village officials, the EOWC and the NJDEP.
In anticipation of the contract’s expiration in little more than two years, the village put forth three possible options: negotiate a new contract with the EOWC; sell the village water system, which South Orange currently owns; or negotiate a commodity purchase contract and an operating and maintenance contract.
Rother explained that the first option, to remain with the EOWC, would be fairly simple to execute. All the village would have to do is negotiate a new agreement and secure the NJDEP’s approval.
The sole benefit of this option, according to Lewis, would be that no additional infrastructure would be necessary. The burdens include: a likely rate hike, the commission’s proven unreliability in its ability to provide the necessary quantity of water, and the uncertainty of a continued relationship with a financially challenged public entity that has not met village standards in the past.
“In short: not much benefit and a lot of burden,” Lewis said.
The second option, Rother explained, would be to sell the whole water system, a long process that would include a system valuation and a public referendum. The time frame for this option is approximately three years and, as the contract with EOWC expires in approximately two years, this is currently a non-option.
One resident asked why this process was only starting now, when the second option is now out of the question, and panel members assured him that the second option has been under consideration for several years.
“We didn’t want to be driven by anger at East Orange Water,” Visconi said, adding that the three-year timeline has been in place for a while. “It is a very permanent solution to what may be a temporary problem.”
According to Lewis, benefits of the second option would be rates regulated by the Board of Public Utilities and the capital costs being spread over the rate-payer base of the system’s new owner. Burdens would be the length of the process compounded by the uncertainty of the referendum’s outcome; the purchaser likely charging the village a substantial charge for hydrants, a charge which would be shouldered by taxpayers; and the village’s loss of system control.
The third and most appealing option is to contract with a separate entity, like NJAW, to put water in the South Orange system, which would still be owned by South Orange. In addition, so that the village would not have to reconvene a water board, the operations — such as billing, and maintenance of the system — would be outsourced in a second contract. Visconi explained that NJDEP approval would be necessary for this option, and an interconnection with the new water supplier would have to be constructed.
According to Lewis, the myriad benefits of the third option include: the village’s retention of control over the water system; the water supplier, NJAW, paying for the interconnection’s capital costs; no increase in water rates — there will likely be a decrease with NJAW; the village retaining the option to sell the system in the future; and NJAW is BPU-regulated, whereas the EOWC is not. The sole burden of this option, said Lewis, is that the village must bid the operating and maintenance agreement, and the results of the bid and the performance of successful bidders are unknown.
Clarke added that this option would give the village a safe water supply by the Dec. 31, 2016, deadline and would give the village flexibility with regard to future decisions.
NJAW’s DeVecchis and Shroba, who brought a bevy of NJAW experts with them, outlined their company’s track record and rudimentary plans for South Orange.
American Water, the largest publicly traded water utilities company in the country, is headquartered in Voorhees; the company has been operating since 1886. NJAW serves many nearby municipalities, including Maplewood, West Orange and Millburn.
Shroba explained that were South Orange to enter into a partnership with NJAW, villagers’ water would come from the Canoe Brook Water Treatment Plant on the JFK Parkway, across the street from the Short Hills Mall.
A resident asked during the question-and-answer session about Maplewood having lost water for approximately a week in some areas due to Superstorm Sandy. Shroba assured that the state-of-the-art plant was built in 2012 and the plant floor is above the flood hazard area, so if New Jersey should get hit with another Superstorm Sandy, the plant will not flood and customers should not lose water.
He explained that NJAW has the capacity to provide water for South Orange, and also controls the water for taste and odor.
The plant uses a high rated dissolved air flotation clarification process of ozone preoxidation to clean its water. Shroba explained that this “fancy name” just means they create small bubbles in the water that stick to particles, causing them to rise to the top so they can be removed. The plant also has powder-activated carbon as a backup filtration system, but has never had to use it.
He also pointed out that VOCs — such as the dry-cleaning chemical tetrachloroethylene, the VOC found in the EOWC water — have not been detected in NJAW’s water.
“The best way to treat water is not to treat it at all, but to have a really high quality water source,” Shroba said.
NJAW has the ability to interconnect with other systems in case of emergency and also has standby generators, according to Shroba. Water is sampled and tested daily, in compliance with federal and state regulations. NJAW also works to maintain its infrastructure on a regular basis, according to Shroba, and recently invested $10 million on water main replacement and rehabilitation this year in northern New Jersey.
“We have a very good track record; we have a great track record,” Shroba said.
Getting more technical, DeVecchis explained that, for NJAW to interconnect with the South Orange system, the water company would have to lay some new pipe leading from Maplewood to a new booster station, likely to be added at the entrance to the Department of Public Works yard, set back from the road. This booster station would pump the water into the South Orange Avenue Reservoir, an underground storage tank owned by South Orange that supplies all water to the village.
Residents in the Farrell Field area, where pipes will be laid from Maplewood to the booster station, questioned the impact this would have on the neighborhood.
DeVecchis assured residents that the booster station would be mostly hidden from sight. NJAW engineer Dana Wright explained that the booster station would be a one-story building, approximately the size of a garage, and that the company would do everything they could to preserve the environment and prevent noise pollution.
The NJAW representatives promised to be communicative about construction as time passes and to engage in open dialog with residents.
Additionally, concerns were raised about adding pipes to Audley Street, where streams run underneath the road, which often floods.
“We looked at the Audley Street situation very closely,” Rother said, explaining that the village engineer may do work to remediate flooding in the area while NJAW has the street open to lay pipe.
Any pipes and buildings added by NJAW would belong to the company while the overall system would remain in the village’s possession.
According to DeVecchis, for this investment to be worthwhile for NJAW, it would expect a long-term bulk order sales agreement with South Orange, probably for 20 to 30 years.
Rother promised that, as the rates are BPU-regulated, the capital improvements, which will likely cost NJAW millions, will not affect residents’ rates, and Clarke added that any increases in future years for various reasons would be spread out over all of NJAW’s customers, not just among South Orange residents.
Levison added that this proposal has already been discussed with the NJDEP and the state has approved it.
Torpey invited members of the community with suggestions or questions to send an email to anyone on the panel, or to info@southorange.org.
At the next South Orange Board of Trustees meeting on Monday, Sept. 22, Clarke and Levison will officially propose the third option to their fellow trustees, although the other four trustees were in attendance at the Sept. 15 meeting.