CITIES OF NEWARK, PATERSON AND PERTH AMBOY, NJ
BACKGROUND
Utility Name:
Cities of Newark, Paterson and Perth Amboy, NJ
Areas of Impact:
Reduction of combined sewage overflows and flooding, Water Quality Improvements, Protection of Public Health, Affordability
Funding:
Spring Point Partners
IMPACTS
The Cities of Newark, Paterson and Perth Amboy are all lower income urban, environmental justice communities located in the State of New Jersey. All three cities have combined sewer systems which need to be upgraded and addressed to reduce adverse public health and environmental impact from raw sewage flooding into basements and streets and overflows into rivers and streams. However, each of these three cities have median household income levels that are far below the national average.
Federal and State regulations require each of these three cities to implement a long term combined sewer overflow (CSO) control plan to reduce the adverse impacts of CSO's. Newark and Paterson are both customers of a larger regional sewer authority. Perth Amboy belongs to a different regional sewer authority. In all three cases, the regional authorities developed the long term CSO control plan for each city. The result was plans that would cost each city hundreds of millions of dollars and take dozens of years to implement. Significant rate increases were projected for these lower income communities while the public health and environmental issues associated with combined sewer overflows would not be addressed for many years.
The state environmental regulator, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), was very concerned about the high costs and rate increases that were being proposed for these three cities and so asked Moonshot Missions to review the plans and provide recommendations.
Moonshot reviewed the long term CSO control plan developed for Newark and Paterson and recommended revisions that would reduce the cost of implementation by $25 million for each city, without reducing the scope and corresponding environmental benefits.
Moonshot also reviewed the long term CSO control plan developed for Perth Amboy and recommended revisions that would reduce the cost of implementation by nearly $90 million for Perth Amboy.
Moonshot then worked with the NJDEP and the three cities to get their long term CSO control plans revised to reflect Moonshot's recommendations, thereby resulting in significant cost savings for these three environmental justice cities.
