1.6 New Jersey Water Statutes: WQAA, Lead Service Lines & PFAS

1.6 New Jersey Water Statutes: WQAA, Lead Service Lines & PFAS

The Water Quality Accountability Act (N.J.S.A. 58:31-1 et seq.)

The Water Quality Accountability Act (WQAA) was signed July 21, 2017 and took effect October 19, 2017. It was substantially amended in 2021 by P.L. 2021, c. 262, and the amended requirements — not the original 2017 text — are what an operator is accountable for today.

Applicability

The WQAA applies to public water systems with more than 500 service connections, roughly 300 systems in New Jersey. That threshold captures essentially every municipal water department, regional utilities authority, and investor-owned water company in the state.

Asset Management Plan

Covered purveyors were required to develop and implement an asset management plan by April 19, 2019. The plan must:

• Inventory all assets — transmission and distribution mains, storage, booster pumping, treatment, and instrumentation — with condition assessment and estimated remaining useful life;
• Include a water main renewal program based on a 150-year replacement cycle, or another appropriate replacement cycle justified by the purveyor;
• Include programs for inspecting and maintaining pumps, sources, and treatment facilities;
• Comply with applicable AWWA standards; and
• Be certified by the licensed operator and the authorized official of the system.

Valve and Hydrant Programs — Use the 2021 Frequencies

Exam Trap Alert: Older study material — and older NJDEP guidance — states two years for large valves and four years for small valves. Those were the original 2017 frequencies. The 2021 amendments doubled both intervals to 4 years and 8 years. Answer with the current 4/8 rule.

Hydrant inspection verifies operating nut condition, nozzle cap threads, static and residual pressure, flow, and — critically for New Jersey winters — that the internal drain valve of a dry-barrel hydrant fully drains the barrel, since a barrel left full will freeze and split. A hydrant found inoperable is tagged out of service and reported to the fire department.

Annual Certification — December 31

The responsible corporate officer of the public water system, the executive director, or the mayor or chief executive officer must certify in writing to NJDEP each year that the purveyor complies with the WQAA's requirements, including the valve and hydrant programs. The certification deadline is now December 31 annually; it was formerly October 19.

Cybersecurity Program (P.L. 2021, c. 262)

The 2021 amendments, P.L. 2021, c. 262, signed November 8, 2021, require every public community water system with more than 500 service connections to maintain a cybersecurity program developed in accordance with Board of Public Utilities requirements. The statute requires the program to conform to one or more of three named frameworks:

1. The NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity;
2. The CIS Critical Security Controls for Effective Cyber Defense; or
3. The ISO/IEC 27000 family of standards for an information security management system.

Two further obligations came out of the same amendments: purveyors had to obtain a cybersecurity insurance policy by February 6, 2022, and must promptly report cybersecurity incidents to the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell (NJCCIC), also effective February 6, 2022. Existing programs had to be updated within 180 days of the effective date, by May 7, 2022.

In practice a conforming program segments the operational technology (SCADA) network from the enterprise business network, requires multi-factor authentication for all remote access, eliminates vendor default credentials, maintains off-site backups, and exercises an incident response plan.

---

The Lead Service Line Replacement Law (P.L. 2021, c. 183)

Enacted in July 2021 and codified at N.J.S.A. 58:12A-40 et seq., New Jersey's Lead Service Line Replacement Law requires every public community water system to identify and replace 100 percent of lead service lines and galvanized service lines requiring replacement within 10 years of enactment — a statutory deadline of July 2031.

• A service line is the pipe connecting the main in the street to the building's interior plumbing or meter.
• Full replacement means both the utility-owned portion (main to curb stop) and the customer-owned portion (curb stop to the first shutoff valve or meter inside the building).
• Partial replacements are prohibited. Cutting a lead line and joining it to new copper creates a galvanic couple between dissimilar metals that accelerates corrosion of the remaining lead, while the physical disturbance shakes loose protective scale and releases spikes of particulate lead. A partial replacement can leave a home worse off than no replacement at all.

Systems must maintain and update a service line inventory and notify customers with known or suspected lead or galvanized-requiring-replacement lines.

---

New Jersey PFAS Drinking Water Standards

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are synthetic organofluorine compounds manufactured since the 1940s for aqueous film-forming foam, non-stick coatings, stain-resistant textiles, and food packaging. The carbon-fluorine bond (roughly 485 kJ/mol) does not break down under environmental conditions, which is why PFAS are called "forever chemicals." Documented health effects include kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, elevated liver enzymes, gestational hypertension, ulcerative colitis, and suppressed antibody response to vaccines.

New Jersey State MCLs (N.J.A.C. 7:10)

Systems monitor at each point of entry (POE) to the distribution system, initially quarterly. Compliance is determined by the running annual average (RAA) of quarterly results at each POE:

$\text{RAA} = \frac{Q_1 + Q_2 + Q_3 + Q_4}{4}$

An exceedance is an MCL violation and triggers Tier 2 public notification under N.J.A.C. 7:10-7 — written notice to affected customers within 30 days, plus media notice and coordination with NJDEP on treatment or source removal.

Federal Status — Know What Changed in 2025

• April 2024: USEPA finalized a National Primary Drinking Water Regulation setting MCLs of 4.0 ppt for PFOA and PFOS (MCLG of zero for each) and 10 ppt each for PFNA, PFHxS, and HFPO-DA (GenX), plus a Hazard Index of 1.0 for mixtures of PFNA, PFHxS, HFPO-DA, and PFBS.
• May 2025: USEPA announced it would keep the PFOA and PFOS MCLs but extend the compliance deadline to 2031, and would rescind and reconsider the regulatory determinations for PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA, and the Hazard Index. NJDEP is working to incorporate the federal requirements into State regulation.

What This Means Operationally

Under Section 1413 of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, New Jersey holds primacy and its standards may be more stringent than federal standards but never less. Today, the enforceable numbers in New Jersey remain 14 ppt PFOA, 13 ppt PFOS, and 13 ppt PFNA, and PFNA remains regulated in New Jersey regardless of the federal reconsideration. Utilities designing new PFAS treatment should still size for the 4.0 ppt federal PFOA and PFOS limits, because those limits stand and take effect in 2031.

Treatment

Conventional treatment — coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, sand filtration, chlorination, ozonation — does not remove PFAS. Three technologies are used:

1. Granular activated carbon (GAC): bituminous or reagglomerated carbon in pressure vessels run lead-lag. Long-chain compounds (PFOA, PFOS, PFNA) adsorb well; empty bed contact times are typically 10 to 20 minutes. When the lead vessel breaks through, it is changed out or reactivated and returned as the lag vessel.
2. Synthetic anion exchange resin (IX): single-use or regenerable beads with quaternary amine functional groups that attract the anionic sulfonate and carboxylate heads while the polymer backbone holds the hydrophobic tail. Faster kinetics, shorter EBCT (roughly 2 to 4 minutes), smaller footprint.
3. Nanofiltration and reverse osmosis: greater than 95 to 99 percent rejection of long- and short-chain PFAS, at the cost of a concentrated reject stream (roughly 15 to 25 percent of feed flow) that requires specialized disposal.