Thousands of dangerous lead water lines to be replaced in Clifton, Passaic and Paterson – NorthJersey.com
The Passaic Valley Water Commission is set to embark on a $45 million to $50 million project to remove thousands of lead water service lines that pose serious health risks.
The commission is concerned that its customers in Paterson, Passaic and Clifton are ingesting water contaminated with lead that leaches from the pipes, officials said. The pipes in question are those which connect the water main to water lines inside homes and buildings.
Clifton’s representative to the commission, Joe Kolodziej, recently told the City Council PVWC has its financing in order.
“We have already lined up the funding with the NJ Infrastructure Bank,” Kolodziej said. “They promised us $20 million in loan forgiveness.” The I-Bank is a state financing authority that issues bonds for environmental and transportation projects.
The loan forgiveness means the work will come at no cost to residents having their water lines swapped, he said.
Lead poisoning occurs when lead builds up in the body, often over months or years. Even small amounts of lead can cause serious health problems.
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Children 6 and younger are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can severely affect mental and physical development. At very high levels, lead poisoning can be fatal.
The commission has identified roughly 7,000 suspect properties, many of them residences, that require new water service pipes that connect the water main to the house.
In Passaic, an estimated 1,200 out of 8,523 customers are affected. The figures are 3,300 out of 22,858 in Paterson and 2,000 out of 22,000 in Clifton, officials said.
Those numbers may change as the PVWC continues to search for lead lines, officials said.
Much of the preliminary work on the massive project has been done. Thousands of test holes have been made, PVWC Commissioner Ruby Cotton said. That involves PVWC workers boring down to find which pipes contain lead.
The commission, which is owned by the cities of Clifton, Passaic and Paterson, provides drinking water to more than 800,000 customers in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Morris and Passaic counties. It has asked the governing bodies in all three cities for help in securing access to the properties affected.
On Tuesday, Passaic was first of the three to adopt a local ordinance allowing the water commission to access lines on private property. A major concern, Kolodziej said, is absentee landlords.
Cotton said Paterson will tweak an ordinance that the city of Newark used that allows commission workers to go onto private property to swap waterlines with the tenants’ permission.
“I expect that Paterson’s legal department will have something by the end of the month,” Cotton said.
Another concern is that residents might believe the government will use this as an opportunity to get inside the house and conduct inspections.
That’s not the case, Passaic Business Administrator Rick Fernandez said.
“This is the service, not the pipes in your house,” Fernandez said.
He added that the commission will return the property to its original condition.
As far as a timetable, the city of Newark changed out 23,000 lead pipes in 18 months, officials said.
Matt Fagan is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: fagan@northjersey.com
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