South Post Road residents continue to have concerns about water — not due to the recent flooding or sewer/septic problems. Something even more basic: their drinking water.
All 17 homes on South Post Road have wells for drinking water; none are connected to the American Water Company’s network of water lines that run through most of West Windsor. And therein lies the problem. Some of those wells are contaminated.
“The township is aware of this situation and has been involved for many years with trying to come up with solutions for the South Post Road residents,” explained Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh. “But unfortunately there are legal limits on what the township can do. This type of situation is heavily regulated by the state. Nonetheless, we continue to explore options.”
Those options are now being explored by a newcomer to Township Council, Peter Mendonez, whose professional life is as director of a green-tech startup focusing on solar energy. “I made two campaign promises: to help the residents of Cranbury Road get sidewalks, and to help the residents of South Post Road get safe drinking water,” he says. “I am honoring my promises and working hard at finding solutions here.”
Noting that traditional thinking has not yielded a viable solution, Mendonez, council’s liaison to the town’s Environmental Commission, seeks a creative, outside-the-box answer — a solution that has eluded officials for many years.
Explains Pat Ward, West Windsor’s director of community development: “We first learned about this issue as a result of a real estate transaction many years ago, when a homeowner was selling his property and was required to have the well water tested for contaminants. The tests came back positive, and therefore the state became involved.”
“We asked the state to investigate,” Hsueh says, “and all of the wells on South Post Road were lab-tested by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). At that time five homes were found to have gone over the accepted limit of maximum contaminate levels (MCLs) as defined by the DEP and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Accordingly, under the state spill fund, those homes have been provided with a water filtration system known as the port of entry filtration system (POET) at state expense.”
“The readings on the MCLs levels vary over time,” explains West Windsor health officer Jill Swanson. “At one point, six houses had been identified as having higher than acceptable MCLs, and so all six were given POET systems. Currently the number is four homes out of the 17.”
“We want to help these residents; we don’t want any residents to have contaminated drinking water,” says Hsueh. “So, in approximately 2003, I started meeting with the residents to try to come up with solutions. Our first thought was to just help them get connected to the water infrastructure already in place. But we learned that unfortunately it is illegal for the township to do that because American Water is a private entity, and therefore the township cannot bond to pay to connect with a private entity. Moreover, when we contacted American Water for assistance, they explained that they cannot independently expand their water lines; they need to work in conjunction with a developer or a homeowner’s association.”
According to Hsueh, the township contacted DEP on several occasions for assistance. DEP officials, however, explained that contamination levels are relatively low and affect a small number of people, so South Post Road is not a high priority for the state.
The mayor and township staff met with South Post Road residents in November, 2012, to discuss possible courses of action. Township officials, in conjunction with American Water employees, estimated that the cost for extending the necessary water main, water lines, three fire hydrants, and other infrastructure would be $400,000, including $58,000 the state agreed to contribute because it would no longer need to provide POET systems to the affected homes.
The township suggested that the residents establish a homeowners’ association and deal with American Water directly to be connected to the water lines. The residents were not interested. “They indicated that this option was cost-prohibitive,” Swanson says.
In a letter dated February 11, 2013, which was reviewed by some of the South Post Road residents, the mayor formally reached out to the DEP, explaining that the options presented were all problematic. “Public water supplies are located at both ends of the road; yet, extension of the service is confounded by financial and procedural barriers. It is my hope that your office will be able to facilitate a review of the circumstances surrounding this case and offer assistance to these families in securing a safe and reliable water source for their homes.”
In his letter, the mayor explains that while the POET systems provided by the state have offered a temporary solution, the financial impracticality of asking the residents to monitor their own drinking water in addition to the annual state testing meant that some residents might end up being exposed to the contaminated water, and that connection to the American Water system was a better solution. Noting that the township was prohibited from offering much assistance, the mayor once again asked the state to consider South Post Road a high-priority area and offer aid for residents to connect to the water grid.
On June 11, 2013, the administration sent letters to the South Post Road residents outlining the DEP’s response. The DEP stressed that the POET systems were effective in removing the contaminants from the drinking water. The DEP reaffirmed that it would be willing to offer $58,000 toward the water line connection project and also stated that the state would be willing to make the South Post Road area a higher priority — if all of the residents agreed to allow the state access to their properties for testing.
Says Swanson: “Along with the letter, we provided the residents with a form to sign agreeing to allow the state to inspect their properties. We only received one response, which was ‘no.’ To date, the other 16 homes have not responded at all.”
At the May 12 council meeting Business Administrator Marlena Schmid announced that the DEP had proposed a different type of test for the affected homes.
The proposed vapor intrusion testing would be conducted in the houses’ basements. It is not intended to identify the source of contamination but rather to measure volatile organics in the indoor air, which could indicate that contamination exists in the underlying shallow aquifer and/or soils beneath the homes. The testing would be a safeguard to help ensure that site contamination is not adversely impacting residents’ health.
Depending on the results, Schmid says, mitigation systems or other options may be recommended by the state.
The administration will send a memo to each resident explaining the most recent plan. “We want the residents to be fully informed,” Schmid says, “and we also want to make it clear to them that their participation is completely voluntary.”
The only other option, Hsueh says, is that the township could establish a water utility department on the residents’ behalf (West Windsor does not have such an entity currently). “This option is cost-prohibitive for the township,” he says. “Even if we were allowed to pay for this, asking taxpayers for over $400,000 to benefit 17 homes would not be fair, especially because generally homeowners in every neighborhood must pay for their own water line connections, just as they do for sewer connections. And again our attorneys, as well as the DEP, have confirmed that the township is prohibited from bonding for this issue.”
“So our only recourse would be to set up a water utility company for this project,” Hsueh says. “This would also cause the township to incur great expense, because we would need to pay for the staff, many of whom would need to be specialized, to run the utility until such time as the neighborhood would be fully connected to American Water. And somehow we would still have to come up with the money to pay for the infrastructure to connect to American water, which would ultimately be borne by the taxpayers.”
Adds Ward: “Until such time as the lines were connected, the township would be responsible and liable for the water quantity and quality, the filtering equipment, and other issues. This would be an added expense that the township would have to incur, which is difficult in these economic times.”
More than a decade after the water issue was first revealed, the problem persists, and Mendonez, a new face in West Windsor politics, has now joined the search for a solution.
“East Windsor has a water utility commission; so do other towns,” he says. “Perhaps an option would be to enter into a shared-services agreement with a town such as East Windsor that already has a water utility commission,” he says.
“Another possibility would be to have the state, the county, and the township all come to the table and work together to come up with a financial solution that would also solve this serious public policy issue,” Mendonez says.
Mendonez also sees real potential in creating West Windsor’s own water utility commission.
“There are definitely obstacles, the primary one being financial. An electric utility commission generates revenue fairly quickly, so if we were to create one, the township would benefit economically in a reasonably quick time. However, the payback for a water utility commission is much slower. The financial return is not there in the short term — the average home pays $25 per month for water, which is not a lot of revenue.
“This would have to be a long-term commitment, with the understanding that the financial gain would be several years into the future. But it would eventually become a revenue-generator. If done correctly, water infrastructure can last up to 100 years, so the replacement and maintenance costs would not be that high,” Mendonez says.
“There are significant up-front costs, which the Environmental Commission recognizes. The administration would have to take the lead on that in order to generate the needed resources. We are hoping that the mayor, through his connections to DEP, can help us with this. Also Michael Hornsby, the chair of the Environmental Commission, used to work at DEP in the water filtration section, so he has a great deal of expertise in this area.”
“There are many options, but it comes down to cost. The residents of South Post Road do not have the resources to pay over $400,000 for this project. And they want a permanent solution.”
