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The new financing will allow the city to replace the 18,000 buried lead service lines in the next 24 to 30 months, according to Mayor Ras Baraka, a significant change from what city officials had estimated would take 10 years to complete.
“We are going to do this as swiftly as humanly possible,” Baraka said at a news conference in Newark, standing among two dozen New Jersey officials.
Years of neglect, mismanagement and denials have plunged this city into one of the largest environmental crises in a U.S. city in years, provoking anger, confusion and frustration among Newark’s 285,000 residents.
Though lead has long been an issue here, the situation escalated in October, after a spate of tests led to the distribution of faucet water filters — the same filters used in Flint, Michigan — to remove lead that had been leaching into the water.
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But two weeks ago, more testing found that some of the filters were failing to adequately remove lead, and the city was forced to distribute bottled water.
Early last week, scenes of more than 100 people waiting for nearly an hour under the hot August sun to pick up bottled water further eroded the trust residents had in what was coming out of their taps.
The announcement Monday, however, carried little new information about short-term solutions in Newark.
Baraka said bottled water distribution would continue while city, state and federal agencies continue to test the filters and the tap water around the city to determine how widespread the problem was.
He offered no new details on the results of lead tests conducted during the last two weeks.
Hanging over the announcement Monday was the growing frustration local officials have with the response from the federal government. Baraka, Gov. Philip D. Murphy and local officials have been calling on the EPA and officials in Washington to provide financial assistance to Newark as they struggle to contain the lead crisis.
“The one that’s lacking is the federal government,” Joseph N. DiVincenzo Jr., the Essex County executive, said Monday. He turned to Rep. Donald Payne Jr., the only congressman in attendance, and said, “You’ve got to bring home the cash.”
“We all know that we have to move faster and together in order to restore residents’ trust in their water,” Murphy said Monday.
The plan includes issuing $120 million in bonds through the Essex County Improvement Authority. The county, which has a strong AAA bond rating, can borrow funds at lower interest rates than the city itself.
The new round of financing, organized through Essex County, also removes any financial burden to homeowners for replacing the lead service lines in the city. Under the previous $75 million plan that the city began in March, residents would have had to pay a maximum of $1,000 for the replacement work. This was seen as a financial blow in a city where the median income is $34,826 and nearly 30% of residents live below the poverty line.
Baraka also stressed that though the money was a loan, it would not lead to higher taxes. “It’s not on the taxpayers’ head,” he said.
One barrier to a wide-scale service-line replacement is that they are often located on private property, meaning residents need to request a replacement and then grant access to the city’s contractors. In Newark, where 70% of residents are renters, it can be difficult to track down landlords.
Baraka said he was seeking to change that, working with state legislators to create a law or ordinance that would allow contractors from the city to work on private property and to fix lead service lines without permission.
About 800 of Newark’s 18,000 lead service lines have been replaced this year.
“It goes without saying that this is a situation none of us welcome but that we are committed to getting right,” Murphy said.
This article originally appeared in
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