Drinking Water

Access to clean water is a human right, but for thousands of families in New Jersey, the rising cost of water and sewer bills turns this essential service into a financial burden. Part One of the Water Affordability Series, "The Challenge," laid out the harsh reality of this issue, from water shut-offs to tax liens. This installment, "The Opportunity," is about action. It identifies the gaps in current assistance programs and explores the collaborative actions and policy changes needed to create long-term affordability programs necessary for a sustainable and equitable water system. New Jersey Future, with member of Jersey Water Works, aims to garner public support and advocate for such policy change with the goal of ensuring that every resident has access to clean, affordable water and the opportunity to thrive.

Water is a vital piece of community infrastructure. Water affordability and infrastructure challenges are connected. We need to invest in water infrastructure to maintain it, but we also need to fund those investments in ways that ensure people can afford to pay their water bills. As water advocates, we must embrace multifaceted solutions to tackle the water affordability problem from various angles. An estimated one-fifth of all New Jersey households face challenges affording their water and sewer bills. Unaffordable water bills threaten savings, wealth building, and access to water since water debt can lead to shut-offs and tax lien sales along with compounding interest and penalties that make it harder to pay off the debt. Permanent solutions in this area can have far-reaching benefits. These include strengthening the tenuous hold on building savings and retaining wealth at the household level, ensuring access to basic needs such as clean drinking water and healthful sewerage and stormwater service at the community level, and supporting sustained progress of existing projects targeting lead service line removal and combined sewer overflow at the utility level, which are vital community infrastructure and have long term health and economic benefits.

On October 9 and 10, the PFAS Summit, organized by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) in collaboration with partners like the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), drew an impressive crowd at the NJIT campus in Newark. With nearly 300 participants, the summit featured a diverse lineup of speakers, each bringing unique perspectives and expertise to the discussion. For those interested in learning more about the speakers' backgrounds, a link to their bios is available, along with a detailed agenda of the event.

Lieutenant Governor Way signed into law New Jersey’s Bill S1034/A2929, marking a major victory for public health and tenant protections across the state. The legislation, which passed with unanimous approval in the state legislature, ensures that all tenants will receive critical information about potential lead exposure in their drinking water.

“Tenants are often the population least likely to know their status,” explains Deandrah Cameron, policy manager at New Jersey Future. “This new law ensures a more comprehensive, timely, and accurate disclosure process to all tenants, including those who don’t directly pay their water bills.”

The Tenth Annual Jersey Water Works conference, a gathering of over 200 water professionals, community advocates, and policymakers from diverse backgrounds and regions of New Jersey, took place on December 13, 2024, at The College of New Jersey. The event marked a decade of progress in water management, fostering discussions on key issues and opportunities in the field.