Panel Discusses Municipal Water Taste, Protection

Eleven inches of snow were dumped onto Chatham Township and Chatham Borough on Wednesday. That's enough water to supply the township and borough for 200 days, according to Richard Barret, who headed a panel of local water experts Friday night at The Library of the Chathams to educate residents about our world's most essential natural resource.

The event, sponsored by the Environmental Commissions of Chatham Borough and Chatham Township, drew Scott Brezinski and Kevin Watsey of the NJ American Water Company and Richard Plambeck of the Chatham Borough Environmental Commission. The three spent over two hours fielding questions from Barret about the ownership, cost, source and—most pressing to the Commission—protection of the Chathams' water supply.

Barret stressed that the meeting was not adversarial. "It's a chance for us and you to pose questions," he said.

"We wanted residents to have a better understanding of where water comes from, what's in it and what they can do to protect their own water sources," said Patricia Collington, the chair of the Chatham Township Environmental Commission who organized the event.

Before the event started, attendees were asked to choose the best tasting water from three separate jugs, which contained borough water, township water and Poland Spring bottled water. One hundred and sixty six subjects at Chatham High School were asked to do the same in a double blind taste test. Overall, the subjects at the high school preferred borough water, while the attendees at the event preferred Poland Spring.

The results of Thursday night's taste test were surprising, considering that Poland Spring water was the least favorite of the high schoolers. High school students from the township overwhelmingly preferred borough water, though students from the borough had no clear preference.

Either way, the township and borough have very different ways of supplying water to their residents. NJAW, the company that supplies the township's water, spends $220 million a year to supply water to 17 counties in NJ. Although the state owns the rights to the township's water supply, according to Watsey, NJAW purchases permits from the state to divert water into reservoirs from the Passaic and Raritan rivers or pump it out of aquifers. The water then gets treated and distributed to township residents and others in 182 towns.

"We make sure we have enough water to meet the needs of each town," Watsey said.

The borough municipality, on the other hand, has an operating budget of $1.3 million and owns the supply, distribution and production of its water, according to Plambeck. Borough water ends up in three 500,000-gallon tanks off of Longwood Avenue. These tanks, filled, can supply about 1 1/2 to two days worth of water to residents.

On average, township residents, in part because NJAW has "a lot of infrastructure in place to prepare [surface] water  [to make it potable]," according to Watsey, pay more for their water than borough residents, whose water is sourced from groundwater from the Buried Valley Aquifer systems.

Although both the borough and NJAW charge what amounts to less than one cent per gallon of water, a moderate water user in the Borough would spend about $99 for service per quarter, while Township residents would spend around $150, according to Plambeck.

It's true that much of the water in the township and borough is used for activities other than consuming. Still, "the evaluation of water is first and foremost culinary," according to Dr. Barret.

Taste, however, as Watsey stressed, doesn't correlate to filtration. Still, vendors set up booths along the corridor of the filled-to-capacity room to demonstrate the elaborate filtration systems available on the market, many promising to filter out "contaminants" to improve taste and purify the water.

Plambeck mentioned that lead in the water can be "a problem from time to time" because the borough is an old neighborhood. He suggested not drinking cold water from the tap in the morning and using a Brita Filter system.

The borough and township, however, chlorinate their water to disinfect it and have to meet strict regulations from the state.

The evening's discussion moved from the taste and contaminants of water to its protection, with panelists suggesting simple things residents can do to protect their water supply.

Ella Filippone, executive director of the Passaic River Coalition, an organization that aims to protect the water quality and quantity of the Passaic River, said that the coalition has created a Wellhead Protection Ordinance to delineate and regulate land around wellheads to keep groundwater contaminants out of municipal wells.

In this vein, she urged residents to manage their runoff water. According to Collington, recognizing and preventing source point pollution is the number one way residents can protect their drinking water. Source point pollution is any signalized localized source of pollution, such as runoff from herbicides, pesticides or pet wastes. 

To reduce the amount of runoff, which may contain contaminants that find their way into drinking water, residents can reduce the amount of lawn and pavement on their properties, plant groundcover, create gardens and dispose of hazardous substances properly.

Adam Osborn, an Americorps Watershed Ambassador who helped organize the MHS taste test, hoped that residents would walk away with a better understanding of water pollution.

"As a watershed ambassador, I was hoping [residents would] become more informed about sources of pollution," he said.

Water protection, Collington said, starts with residents knowing where the water comes from.

"Then they can understand how to protect their water sources," she said.

Note: This version of this article reflects corrections. Enough snow fell during the recent snowstorm to provide water to borough residents for 200 days, not two, and borough water is pumped to three 500,000-gallon tanks off of Longwood Avenue, not 5,000-gallon tanks.