by Alison Mitchell, Co-Executive Director, New Jersey Conservation Foundation
The grass may be greener in the other fella’s yard, as the saying goes, but that neighbor is likely wasting a lot of water and applying harmful chemicals to keep it that way.
Lush green lawns might be better for the environment than pavement, but their upkeep comes with heavy costs – the non-native species of grass we favor don’t often survive this time of year without giant doses of ecosystem-polluting herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides. Lawns also suck up a staggering amount of water. About a third of all residential water use in the U.S., or nearly nine billion gallons daily, goes toward landscaping irrigation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
But not every town lets residents water their grass indiscriminately. A handful of North Jersey communities recently found that limiting people’s sprinkler time can reap rewards, and the State is taking notice.
Last month, New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) presented its first Our Water’s Worth It award to the Bergen County utility company Ridgewood Water.
According to Trish Ingelido, director of the DEP’s Division of Geoscience and Water Supply, the award was part of an ongoing campaign launched earlier this year to raise awareness about the importance of our water supply and what goes on behind the scenes to make sure it’s clean and healthy.
“One of the things that triggered the award program was the 50th anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Ingelido said. The federal law was the first of its kind to regulate the quality of drinking water supplies. “We did a look back and a look forward, and we asked ourselves, what has been accomplished at the federal and state level since then? We wanted to recognize utilities or other organizations,” like nonprofits, “that might be going above and beyond.”
Ridgewood Water’s award-winning approach started in 2017, when the Village of Ridgewood, one of four municipalities it serves, passed an ordinance to limit outdoor watering through a two day per week schedule. Within three years, the village racked up a 20% decrease in annual water use.
A ripple effect followed, with Ridgewood Water spreading the word to other towns in its service area. Rich Calbi, the water company’s director, said getting neighborhoods to pay attention starts with basic education about what’s coming out of the faucets.
“Very few consumers understand where their drinking water comes from or how it gets to the tap,” he said. To remedy that, the utility started getting to know its customers through community events like Earth Day fairs. When people understand how their water reaches them, Calbi said, they’re more receptive to learning about source protection, infrastructure renewal, and conservation. By 2023, Glen Rock, Midland Park, and Wyckoff had adopted the same rules around watering as Ridgewood.
At the same time, all four towns were getting more interested in the quality of the water they drink largely because of Ridgewood Water’s outreach. It wasn’t just the strides in conservation that got DEP’s attention – the agency was also impressed by the strategy for protecting the public against contaminated water.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are lab-made compounds sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they build up in the bodies of people, animals, and the environment and stay there. They’re used to make a spectrum of products from makeup to pizza boxes, and they’re everywhere in the Garden State: Last year, ABC News reported that New Jersey has the second highest rate of drinking water contamination from PFAS in the country.
In April, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced regulations for six PFAS nationwide – and not a moment too soon – as scientists race to figure out the health fallout of living with forever chemicals, including a possible increase in the risk for some cancers and developmental delays in children. Though clean water is a fundamental right and one whose cost should be shared equally, those regulations won’t be easily implemented in communities that lack the financial resources for increased monitoring or the installation of new treatment facilities.
Ridgewood Water opened its coffers to comply, building a dozen new PFAS treatment facilities to remove the chemicals from drinking water. Two of the plants are already operational. Five others are under construction. It’s a $140 million project and one of the biggest investments Ridgewood Water has ever made, Calbi said. Its 61,000 Bergen County customers also have access to education about PFAS through the utility.
Its efforts to educate and engage the people it serves are ongoing. And the State knows how important those efforts are. “I think a lot of people, myself included, take for granted all the steps it takes to get water into our homes when we turn the tap on,” DEP’s Ingelido said. With the Our Water’s Worth It campaign, “we want to recognize folks that are taking action, and we want the public to be educated about the challenges that still lie ahead.”
Few things are more crucial to human life and welfare than sufficient supplies of clean, fresh water. The United Nations recognizes it as a human right. Those who work to further that right in the Garden State deserve our thanks – and our help. We can all be partners in this effort, asking our local officials to take action to protect the quality and supply of our drinking water and curtailing our own consumption. And it is definitely time to rethink our approach to lawns!
To read about the DEP’s Our Water’s Worth It campaign, go to https://www.nj.gov/dep/newsrel/2024/24_0026.htm.
To learn about further reducing water and chemical use while increasing biodiversity in your yard through creating pollinator and rain gardens, go to https://homegrownnationalpark.org/.
And for information about preserving New Jersey’s land and natural resources, visit the New Jersey Conservation Foundation website at www.njconservation.org or contact me at info@njconservation.org.
