Water woes boil over in New Jersey’s capital, with revelation of monitoring lapse

Residents of Trenton and its suburbs received a letter last week from their local water utility that informed them an employee had been fired for falsifying drinking water data for 15 months — meaning the water went unmonitored for contaminants for over a year.

The news might otherwise have earned a shrug from the 200,000-plus customers of Trenton Water Works, long used to the mismanagement, money problems, and staffing shortages that have made the utility frequent headline fodder.

But the letter came two years after the state assumed oversight of the utility in New Jersey’s capital city and just a month after state environmental officials blasted its “serious … continued noncompliance” with the state’s Safe Drinking Water Act — and levied a $235,000 penalty.

It also came almost a year after the employee in question last falsified drinking water data.

“There’s a section on the letter that says: ‘What do you need to do now?’ It happened a year ago! Do I buy a time machine and go back and not drink the water?” said Michael Ranallo, a longtime Trenton resident.

Trenton officials deny that the falsified data means the water was tainted. Instead, it was a monitoring violation, not a water quality violation, said Michael Walker, the utility’s chief of communications and community outreach.

The falsified data was “an inexcusable event,” but the employee rightfully got fired and referred to authorities for possible criminal charges, Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora said. A spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office said an investigation remains ongoing.

“We have a couple hundred employees, and unfortunately, one of the water testers, criminally, in my opinion, did not perform his duties and stayed home and fabricated test results. Totally serious violation. Doesn’t mean necessarily that there would have been water violations found,” Gusciora said.

Residents and public officials in the suburbs the utility serves remain skeptical.

“While TWW claims there is no immediate public health risk, I share the frustration and mistrust felt by many Ewing residents and our neighboring communities,” Ewing Mayor Bert Steinmann said in a statement.

Steinmann called for more transparency, accountability, and “swift corrective actions.”

“Falsified data and inadequate testing for contaminants erode public confidence and raise serious questions about the utility’s ability to provide safe, reliable drinking water,” he said.

On the Facebook page Trenton Orbit, which Ranallo co-founded, Ranallo urged customers to challenge their bills and press the state Board of Public Utilities to intervene. A board spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

“Would you pay your cable company if your signal was scrambled for a month?” Ranallo said.

He also complained that local and state officials “made a bigger deal when Starbucks left than anyone has over 220,000 people’s water.”

The Starbucks closure prompted Gov. Phil Murphy to intervene, unsuccessfully.

Trenton Water Works serves all sorts of people and facilities, including restaurants and health care facilities, Ranallo told the New Jersey Monitor.

“If you were to look back over that time, how many people got sick and didn’t even think that it could be the water? We’ll never know,” he said.

While political leaders haven’t said much, state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette was clear in his concerns about the utility in an order he issued in late October.

“The Department has determined that conditions continue to exist at the System that may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health of persons, and that this (order) is necessary to protect public health,” LaTourette wrote.

The order indicates the department will continue its operational oversight of the utility and informs Trenton Water Works it will hire staff to manage its water treatment plant and other operations. The department is now soliciting bids from firms that can help operate, manage, maintain, and repair the utility over at least a two-year period.

Gusciora said the city welcomes the state’s oversight and help in filling staffing gaps that he blamed in part for the 200-year-old utility’s water monitoring lapses and other ongoing problems.

“We’re the second oldest water company in the nation, and it has a lot of historical problems that we’ve been addressing since the get-go,” Gusciora said.

He also blamed the state’s failure to invest in improvements or otherwise support the city. The utility got just $6 million a year in state aid during the Christie administration, compared to $47 million this year, while state property in Trenton is tax-exempt, leaving the 7-square-mile city struggling financially to fill that property-tax gap, he said.

“They drain a lot of our resources and take up space that otherwise would be choice development,” Gusciora said.

Walker estimated the utility has $500 million to $1 billion in capital needs, with projects underway to remove lead from water lines, update the filtration plant, replace its reservoir with decentralized storage tanks, and otherwise modernize operations. Trenton Water Works ranked 25th in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s recent ranking of water systems with the most lead lines nationally, with more than 23,000 lines known to contain lead in need of replacement.

The utility hasn’t raised rates since 2020 but will have to do so annually, beginning next year, to help cover modernization costs, Walker said.

He defended the delay in alerting the public about the employee — one of three water testers — who falsified water data for 15 months, saying the utility is required first to report such things to the state Department of Environmental Protection and follow their directions on community notifications.

“We love our customers, including the ones which are not happy with our performance,” Walker said. “We understand that we need to do a better job of communicating why we do what we do, what it costs, and how it benefits the health and well-being of our consumers. At the end of the day, we are very passionate about what we do, about producing one of the finest drinking water products in the world. We want a stronger relationship with our service area customers, and we will get there.”

Ranallo doesn’t believe it.

“I haven’t had a drop of that water in years,” he said. “I buy bottled water. I don’t consume water from the utility because I don’t trust it.”