Water filter installation in South Jersey

What the water is like across South Jersey

In 1996 the state restricted groundwater withdrawal from the Potomac Raritan Magothy system in the southern coastal plain because drawdown had become excessive. The Delaware River Regional plant at Delran was built the same year for exactly that reason, and it is why Cherry Hill and thirty-seven other municipalities are on treated river water rather than on the aquifer beneath them. Camden still draws its own wells. Vineland is fully independent on thirteen Kirkwood Cohansey wells and treats each of them differently, with aeration for iron, filters for radium and air strippers for volatile organic compounds. The practical divide across this region is simple to state and important to establish for your own address: river water carries a seasonal organic load and the disinfection byproducts that come with it, while coastal plain groundwater carries iron, hardness and radium.

What this means locally

Radium distinguishes this region and most people have never considered it. It occurs naturally in coastal plain groundwater, it arrives in the water itself rather than being picked up from plumbing, and it is removed at the wellhead rather than at your tap. Vineland treats for it explicitly, running some wells through filters for iron and radium and others through air strippers for volatile organic compounds, then adding lime, chlorine and corrosion inhibitors before the water leaves. That well by well approach is the detail to carry into any conversation about equipment here, because the utility does different things to different wells and a system average tells you very little about your own address. It also means the honest answer for many South Jersey households on public supply is that the expensive contaminants are already handled and what remains is hardness or a chlorine taste, both cheap problems. Private well owners in the same geology are in an entirely different position, because nobody is testing their water at all.

Utilities we have researched here

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

• City of Camden water system, operated by American Water Contract Services
• New Jersey American Water, Delaware River Regional system
• New Jersey American Water, Western system
• Vineland Water and Sewer Utility

What that means for equipment

• 4 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.
• 4 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.
• 1 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 South 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.

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 South 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.