Published in the Asbury Park Press
By TODD B. BATES
ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER
Nearly half of New Jersey's 6,100 public drinking water wells are highly susceptible to contamination from volatile organic chemicals because of their proximity to pollution, according to state officials.
Such chemicals, which readily evaporate into the air, include benzene, a known human carcinogen, and trichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen.
"That's pretty scary, isn't it?" asked Linda L. Gillick, a Dover Township resident who chairs the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster there. "This is all a result of past environmental . . . irresponsibility."
"That's what we get for being the most densely populated state and living directly on top of and right next to our well water," said David Pringle, campaign director for the New Jersey Environmental Federation, a nonprofit environmental group.
About half of New Jersey's drinking water comes from wells. And since 1999, state and federal officials have gauged the vulnerability of thousands of public wells and dozens of surface water intakes to contamination under a Source Water Assessment Program.
The state Department of Environmental Protection soon plans to release reports with vulnerability assessments for all of the public wells and surface water intakes, according to DEP officials.
Wells tap into vast underground reservoirs known as aquifers, which have layers of porous sand or rock. Well water or surface waters such as rivers and streams can become contaminated when chemicals are dumped onto or buried in the ground, or otherwise end up in the environment.
Amendments to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in 1996 required New Jersey and many other states to develop Source Water Assessment Programs. The programs entail assessing the vulnerability of wells, rivers and other drinking water sources to pollution, and publicizing the findings.
Monmouth and Ocean counties have hundreds of public water systems. The DEP's program, approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1999, does not cover the roughly 400,000 private wells that serve about 1 1/2 million people.
To date, drinking water quality in New Jersey has largely met government standards.
For example, more than 90 percent of public wells that serve homes have not exceeded limits for volatile organic chemicals in recent years, the DEP says.
"The quality of New Jersey's public drinking water continues to be excellent," according to a DEP report on drinking water violations in 2002, released in November.
However, about 44 percent of New Jersey's public wells are highly susceptible to contamination by volatile organic chemicals, according to preliminary information cited by the DEP.
New Jersey had more than 12,600 known contaminated sites, including 1,040 in Monmouth County and 478 in Ocean County, according to a 2001 DEP list, the latest available.
The sites range from locations with small chemical spills and leaking underground storage tanks to massive Superfund hazardous-waste dumps.
Once vulnerability assessments are completed, the next step would be to develop plans to preserve and protect drinking water sources, the DEP says. Federal law does not require such plans, but the DEP strongly recommends them.
Protecting a water source may include writing zoning ordinances to control development, preserving land, having programs for collecting hazardous waste and making efforts to educate the public, according to the DEP.
Janet Gearman, a 45-year-old Jackson resident who has a shallow well, said she's concerned about the well becoming contaminated.
"I want to do an extensive testing on my well and then, honestly, I should probably (have) this as a yearly or semi-yearly thing to do," she said.
Published in the Asbury Park Press 2/15/04
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