Here’s what’s going on with the water

A few moments ago you hopefully received a public safety alert on your cell phone regarding non-essential use of water. Collectively, we are all working to get the word out that non-essential water use must be reduced, or we may be forced to take more drastic measures.

On Wednesday, a major six-foot diameter water pipe burst in Nutley. This was Montclair’s primary source of water. Our crews immediately got to work rigging our system to hook it up to Cedar Grove, Verona and Clifton water supplies (thank you to those towns!). In the switching of pipes, in some cases relaying water through pumps in fire trucks and from one hydrant to another; and in rerouting of water — sometimes in reverse direction than normal, all of this can create some brown water from sediment being kicked up. However, per federal clean water standards, our water remains safe to drink and is being tested regularly. 

Since our water is coming from the drinking water systems of the towns mentioned above, this is causing everyone to lose pressure and putting a significant strain on supplies which are still recovering from a very dry summer. Given that we don’t know how long it will take for regional authorities to get the system under control and because of limited supply, we must preserve what we can to ensure we have running water for as long as we can.

How can you help?

Montclair typically uses four to five million gallons of water per day. We have to get that number down. Please:
Do not water lawns/gardens/plants – shut off auto timers
Take shorter showers, baths strongly discouraged
Hold off on doing laundry or running the dishwasher until you must
Don’t run the faucet when brushing your teeth
Flush the toilet less frequently

When will things be fixed?

We don’t know. Crews have not been able to repair the main since Wednesday, prompting these concerns about the sustainability of the patchwork system we have in place now.

I’ve been in regular touch with Mayor Spiller, who is doing everything he can, working with officials at every level of government, to get us help. I’ve made sure our exhausted local utility crews know to keep doing what they’re doing to keep water flowing and that we’ll have their backs in terms of making sure funding remains available. And I’ve been in touch with state and federal officials letting them know that they might be hearing from us soon on funding requests as we potentially wear out some infrastructure in this process that we might have to replace.

As the Mayor mentioned in previous communications: we have so far stockpiled 38 pallets of bottled water – each containing approximately 80 cases of water – should they be needed, which would be staged at our Department of Community Services yard – 219 N. Fullerton. If needed, our emergency services would bring bottled water to those who are homebound or face challenges picking up water. We aren’t at that point. Let’s not get to that point. Please cut your water use so that we don’t.

Montclair’s infrastructure isn’t the problem

The previous Council and this Council continue to make significant investments in our water infrastructure from newer pumps seen in the photo above, to massive new filtration facilities next to De Novo, behind Glenfield Middle School and other places around town. But of course our water comes from outside of Montclair, so we are vulnerable when something like this happens.

To that end, going forward I’m going to advocate that we orient our system to be able to pull in water from other sources when necessary. These are not terribly expensive investments. But this current regional system failure teaches us that we should be hard fixed into other systems so the proverbial eggs aren’t all in one basket and so that we’re diversifying sources.

Regionally, there are clearly some issues with aging infrastructure and it’s my hope that State and Federal officials are able to allocate significant investments into hardening this system so that we don’t find ourselves here again, or worse.

We took office at the height of the pandemic and with the pandemic, Hurricane Ida, recession and now this, the world has asked a lot of all of us. And it can be exhausting. But keep spirits high and most importantly — remember that when we all work together we do make it through every challenging situation. We’ll get through this situation too.

Thank you in advance for being part of the solution by helping out.

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-Peter