Water filter installation in Central Jersey

What the water is like across Central Jersey

The Delaware and Raritan Canal is the thread running through the northern half. It carries Delaware River water east into the Raritan basin, and New Brunswick, East Brunswick, Franklin and Old Bridge all draw on it directly or through a supplier. The southern and eastern half is groundwater country. Brick runs wells close to 2,000 feet into the Potomac Raritan Magothy alongside a Metedeconk River intake. Toms River is entirely groundwater across three aquifers. Lakewood and Jackson draw the Cohansey and Englishtown. Two things follow. Blended systems here change character with the season, so a single water test describes a day rather than a baseline. And the coastal plain brings its own chemistry, with iron and radium the realistic complaints rather than the chlorine taste that dominates further north.

What this means locally

The PFAS story here is further along than almost anywhere else in the four states, and it is worth understanding before buying anything. When New Jersey's maximum contaminant level for PFOA took effect in 2021, Middlesex Water's Park Avenue wellfield in South Plainfield exceeded it. The wellfield came out of service that November, a granular activated carbon plant costing 52 million dollars was built, and the completed facility entered full service in July 2023. New Jersey's PFOA standard of 14 parts per trillion is among the strictest in the country and is measured as a running annual average of the four most recent quarters. What that history means at a household level is that the treatment for the region's best known PFAS problem already happened, at the plant. Fitting reverse osmosis at home to solve it is solving a problem somebody else has solved. The better question is which wellfield serves you and what the current running average is, and the annual report answers both.

Utilities we have researched here

12 separate utilities supply the researched towns in this region, and they do not all treat water the same way.

• Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority
• East Brunswick Water Utility
• Jackson Township Municipal Utilities Authority
• Lakewood Township Municipal Utilities Authority
• Middlesex Water Company
• Monroe Township Utility Department
• New Brunswick Water Utility
• New Jersey American Water, Coastal North system
• Old Bridge Municipal Utilities Authority
• Township of Franklin Water Utility
• Trenton Water Works
• Veolia Water New Jersey, Toms River system

What that means for equipment

• 3 towns use chloramine rather than free chlorine as the residual disinfectant. Chloramine needs catalytic carbon or a much longer contact time than a standard cartridge gives it, and a softener on it should be specified with chloramine resistant resin.
• 11 draw at least part of the supply from groundwater. Groundwater is steadier through the year than surface water and usually harder, and it tends to bring iron and manganese rather than the seasonal taste changes a reservoir produces.
• 11 have a documented lead service line position. In every one of them the lead comes from the service line or the plumbing inside the building rather than from the supply, so the measurement that answers it is a first draw sample taken after water has stood overnight.
• 4 have a published PFAS position. Where treatment is warranted it is granular activated carbon or reverse osmosis certified to NSF/ANSI 58. Where the utility already treats for it at the plant, a household system adds nothing.

Towns we cover in Central Jersey

Each has its own page carrying the utility, the source water, the treatment and the lead position, with every figure attributed to a publisher and the year it refers to.

We serve 17 areas in Central Jersey in total. The 4 not linked above are covered through the nearest listed town, usually because they share its water system and a separate page would repeat the same facts under a different name.

The researched towns side by side

Every figure below is taken from the town page it links to, where it carries its publisher and the year it refers to. A blank means we hold no sourced figure for that town rather than that the value is zero.

Systems we install here

Installation and service across Central Jersey

Other regions in New Jersey

Or read the New Jersey hub for the state regulators, the PFAS and lead rules that apply across New Jersey, and every area we cover there.