Published in the Ocean County Observer
Someday safe drinking water will be as valuable a commodity as oil is today.
That's why it was refreshing to hear the tough talk from Dover Township Mayor Paul Brush, when he addressed the Senate Environment Committee in Trenton Thursday.
The state should take over public water operations in New Jersey because some water utilities are owned by foreign corporations that "are more concerned with their bottom-line profit than water quality, providing an adequate supply of water or security," he said.
Longtime Dover Township residents know what Brush is talking about. The epic battle to get Ciba—Geigy, the Swiss-owned chemical giant to clean up the toxic wastes — not only from its own dye operations, but poisons solicited from other companies across the country — that it dumped on its Route 37 property was a rare victory for environmentalists.
They were fought tooth and nail by municipal officials and the business community when they tried to shut down Ciba's pipeline that dumped carcinogenic and mutagenic material into the Atlantic Ocean off Ortley Beach. Dover officials had Greenpeace protesters arrested when they attempted to plug the pipeline.
Now the property is a federal Superfund site with a state-of-the-art cleanup operation under way, thanks to the perseverance of a few people who pushed the issue long enough for officials, business owners and residents to realize pollution was bad for business and bad for Ocean County.
More recently, United Water Toms River, whose parent company is owned by Suez, a global corporation, found elevated radiation content in its water and exceeded its water allocation permit limit, leading the state Department of Environmental Protection to ban it from hooking up new customers, halting construction and costing residents and business owners time and money.
Worse, both developments came as a surprise to Dover officials because United Water never bothered to notify them.
"A state-owned public water utility, run on a local or regional basis and preserving and managing our water resources, would better protect and serve the public interest," Brush told the lawmakers.
And, noting the thousands of Dover residents who get water from wells, he said state should pay to build the infrastructure necessary to to hook up all New Jersey residents to public water, or, failing that, at least pay for annual well testing in areas without it.
For now, the state should levy excessive fines — the cost of which cannot be passed on to ratepayers — against water utilities that violate regulations.
Brush is right. We must work now if we are to ensure safe, adequate water supplies in the future.
Published in the Ocean County Observer 04/25/06
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