Crime & Safety
Hydrants Still Being Flushed In Hoboken After Water Main Break: Here's Why
Hoboken Mayor Bhalla said he will hold PSE&G and Veolia Water accountable for aspects of Hoboken's water main break.
HOBOKEN, NJ — After Hoboken's water main break shut schools and businesses early last week, Veolia water is bringing the system back to normal. On Saturday, they said they were still flushing hydrants in the mile-square city, and explained why:
The hydrants are open to relieve pressure on the system as it resets, following the incident where contractors struck and ruptured mains. Should pressure rise dramatically in any one location, it would create the risk of a secondary main break. We are working to prevent that.
— Veolia Water NJ (@VeoliaWaterNJ) March 4, 2023
In a followup message on Friday, Mayor Ravi Bhalla said he's frustrated with both Veolia Water, and with PSE&G, whose contractors apparently caused the break. He said he will hold them accountable.
His message is here:
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I remain extremely disappointed that we were in this situation to begin with, due to circumstances outside of our control, that caused substantial hardship to our city. To that end, today we have sent PSE&G formal notice that the City intends to collect damages incurred as a result of their apparent negligence in conducting underground construction work.
PSE&G has been instructed, through the city’s law department, to preserve all documents and evidence related to their construction work. We intend to hold PSE&G fully accountable for their actions. In addition, as we communicated yesterday, PSE&G’s construction for their gas line upgrades have been suspended until further notice, until they present to our engineering office acceptable, additional safeguards that we will require to mitigate against any future errors on their part.
Find out what's happening in Hobokenfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
My administration is also working to gather all of the relevant facts and information regarding Veolia, as we intend to simultaneously hold them accountable for their very clear failure to call for a timely boil water advisory, that also had a detrimental effect on our residents. This major shortcoming should not be conflated with the tireless work of Veolia’s on-the-ground crews, who did an admirable job working around the clock to isolate the broken water main, as quickly as possible.
As we move forward, we will continue to work diligently to review any and all protocols with our utility companies, to help mitigate the chances of unnecessary infrastructure failures, due to human error, from happening again.
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