PVWC and Newark Considering New Water Treatment Plant: Great Notch, Cedar Grove Reservoirs

NEWARK, NJ — The Passaic Valley Water Commission and City of Newark have agreed to study the possibility of a new treatment plant for the Great Notch and Cedar Grove Reservoirs, according to a news release.

Constructing a treatment system would be “much less expensive” than building storage tanks, which may have cost up to $50 million, but will still “protect the drinking water for more than 800,000 people, said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.

“We strongly believe that the water coming out of these reservoirs either needs to have a treatment system or be stored in tanks,” Tittel said. “The treatment system is more cost-effective, will have a shorter time frame, and save money. This is absolutely critical because the failure to have either a covered reservoir or secondary treatment is putting the people who get water from the Passaic Valley system and Newark water systems at risk.”

According to the NJ Sierra Club, plans to change the reservoirs come from an EPA mandate that requires all utilities that store treated drinking water in open-air reservoirs to either cover those reservoirs or re-treat the water.

“The original plan was to drain the reservoirs and put the water in tanks to protect it from outside contamination,” the club stated in a news release. “Citizens spoke out against this plan as it would ruin the aesthetic and historic value of the reservoirs. If they can pretreat the water at these two reservoirs, they may not need to destroy the Stanley M. Levine Reservoir in Paterson’s Great Falls Historic District. This destruction would ruin the history of the park. This treatment plant would mean they could decommission the Levine Reservoir and keep it as a pond instead.”

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