When it comes to drinking water, some see Newark as a model for cities trying to get the lead out – NJ.com

It was a freezing afternoon in Newark, and a work crew was busy on South 17th Street replacing a lead service line that for the better part of a century had connected a three-family house to a city water main but in recent years was deemed — along with thousands of others like it — to be a potential health risk after testing revealed dangerous levels of lead in tap water around the city.

Using what’s known as a pull-through method that requires some excavation but avoids digging trenches across streets, sidewalks and front yards, the crew from city contractor Roman E&G Corp. disconnected the 1-inch service line from the water meter in the basement, and from the underground water main crews had dug down to access below the street.

Attaching the end of the service line to what was essentially a heavy steel mesh Chinese finger trap, the crew pulled the line out of its narrow underground cavity, and then used the same device to pull the new copper pipe through the space and connect it to the meter and the main. Eventually, the street was patched up, and the job was done.

“It feels good,” to make the new connection, said Tamir Lee, a Newark resident and Roman E&G crew member whose line was replaced last fall. “You feel like the water’s safer for your family, your kids.”

Less than three years into a city-wide lead service line replacement program originally thought to take close to a decade, city officials say the “Herculean” task of replacing about 23,000 lines is all but complete. And except for about 700 property owners who each contributed $1,000 to the cost of the work before the program was revised, officials say replacement of the service lines has been paid for entirely by the city.

“We’ve shown the way to get this done because we had the will to do it,” Kareem Adeem, director of Newark’s water and sewer department, told NJ Advance Media.

“Back when this all started, the mayor said to me, ‘what can we do to take care of this problem?’ ” said Adeem, the administration’s point man on the water line issue. “And I said there’s only one way, and that’s to pull all the lines. So that is done, and we’ve replaced more lead lines, faster, than any other city in America.”

A Six-Year Saga

Since 2016, Newark’s lead contamination saga has attracted attention and drawn comparisons to the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. But following criticism of the city’s initial handling of the situation, Mayor Ras Baraka’s administration has been widely praised for its evolving response, and Newark has been viewed as a model for how municipalities can expedite large projects, which is especially critical now that federal infrastructure funding is on the way.

The replacement job on South 17th Street was part of an initiative Baraka’s administration launched in March 2019 to replace what was originally estimated to be 15,000 lead service lines, at a cost of $75 million.

Three years earlier, testing had revealed that lead levels exceeded the federal standard of 15 parts per billion in the drinking water at 30 city schools. The contamination was traced to flaking lead inside aging service lines, many of them a century old and had to be abated.

Lead, which can cause learning disabilities and behavioral problems, is unsafe for children, health officials said.

Initially, and then as interim and supplemental measures, the city distributed household water filters and bottled water to residents, though many failed to use the filters correctly. Some criticized the Baraka administration for what they viewed as its failure to recognize the severity of the problem. And in June 2018, the Washington D.C.-based Natural Resources Defense Council and a local teachers’ group, known as the Newark Education Workers Caucus, sued the city and state Department of Environmental Protection after lead levels repeatedly exceeded federal standards, according to the suit.

Ultimately, Baraka administration decided to replace the lead lines with copper to solve the problem once and for all.

Meanwhile, the number of service lines needing replacement increased as the city updated its lead inventory, going from an estimated 15,000 lines, to 18,000, and most recently about 23,000. As of Friday, 22,964 lines had been replaced, according to a real-time counter on a city web site created for the replacement program.

Aided by Legislation

Despite increases in the numbers of lines targeted for replacement, the time it’s taken to complete the work has been cut by about two thirds thanks to enabling state legislation adopted in January 2020 with Newark in mind. Among other provisions, the legislation allows municipalities to adopt an ordinance eliminating the need to secure a property owner’s permission to replace a lead service line. The Newark City Council quickly passed, and the mayor signed, a local version.

City officials also dropped an earlier requirement of the replacement program that property owners contribute $1,000 to the total cost of each line replacement, which is about $7,000.

Elimination of the property owner’s contribution, as well as expansion of the number of lines replaced, had been made possible by a $120 million loan from Essex County. That money was raised through a county bond issue, to be repaid with the proceeds from a $155 settlement of a lawsuit Newark filed against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey seeking higher lease payments on city-owned property occupied by Newark Liberty International Airport, the Port Newark container terminal and other facilities.

Since then, Adeem said the pace of removals had accelerated to as many as 120 lead lines a day by up to 20 crews at a time.

Newark does not do sample testing for all drinking water locations, including those where copper lines are in place, and officials acknowledged it was impossible to know just what the average level of lead in the water is citywide.

Progress Prompts A Settlement

Even so, in January 2021, Newark’s progress in reducing the threat of lead contamination impressed the National Resources Defense Council and the NEW Caucus enough for them to settle their suit against the city. And rather than criticizing Newark, the NRDC is now praising the city, as is the Washington-based National League of Cities and others, calling Newark a model for how municipalities across the country can expedite large-scale projects as aging service lines and other infrastructure systems fail.

“Certainly, it’s something that we have pointed to as a model for other cities to look at because we’re going to see this play out all over the country,” Erik Olson, the NRDC’s senior strategic director for health & food, said of Newark’s replacement program. “It was a combination of, certainly the local ordinance, the state legislation, as well as the ability to raise the money… for the replacements that enabled Newark to do this faster than, honestly, any other city that I know of with this number of lines.”

Olson said Newark’s example is especially timely as federal funding becomes available for drinking water projects under the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed by President Biden in November.

“There’s a $15 billion nest egg in the infrastructure bill which is going to have to be spent out,” Olson said. “And we’re hoping that other cities are going to be able to go forward as aggressively as Newark has to replace their lead lines.”

Last month, Gov. Phil Murphy announced plans for allocating $1 billion in federal infrastructure funds for drinking water projects, though the money amounts to a drop in the bucket when compared to an estimated $30 billion in projects needed around the state.

Learning From Newark’s Experience

Cities from around the county and even abroad have reached out to Newark about its replacement program, said Adeem, the water department director, who said he’s gotten calls from Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit, Denver and New York, among other places.

Baraka was a featured speaker at a May 2021 town hall for municipal officials sponsored by the National League of Cities focusing on a set of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency drinking water regulations known as the “Lead and Copper Rule.”

Terms of the settlement of the lawsuit by the NRDC and the NEW Caucus include requirements that Newark continue providing free water filters, replacement cartridges and testing kits, and a public awareness campaign to insure that residents know to change their filers regularly and to properly flush out their new copper pipes.

Yvette Jordan, a Newark resident and history teacher at Central High School who is a member of the NEW Caucus and a plaintiff in the suit, said she was hopeful that the city would honor the terms.

“In so many ways, it is a national model of which we are proud,” said Jordan, whose own lead service line was replaced following readings as high as 44 PPB. “But there are still things that need to be ameliorated, such as the educational aspect.”

Back on 17th Street, Malik Howard paused to watch the line replacement crew do their work. Using the arm of a backhoe to pull the lead and copper pipes, crew members crouched in earthen pits eight feet below street level, connecting pipes as water gushed over their bare hands in sub-freezing temperatures.

Howard, 53, a high-rise window washer who lives on 19th Street, said the quality of his tap water had improved since the lead line into his apartment was replaced in November, something city officials said was a logical byproduct of the new pipes.

“I noticed that the water tasted better,” Howard said.

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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com