Find Out Where Your Drinking Water Comes From in Monmouth County, NJ

The Consumer Confidence Report

There are about 30 public community water companies serving Monmouth County. While most draw water from wells in deep, clay-confined aquifers, larger companies primarily use surface water sources. It's likely your drinking water is a mix of both surface and groundwater. You can find out which aquifers, reservoirs, rivers or streams supply your drinking water by reading the first few paragraphs of each water company's Consumer Confidence Report (CCR).

The CCR is the centerpiece of the right-to-know provisions of the1996 Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act. Every community water system is required to deliver this water quality report to their customers by July 1^st each year. It must include information about the source of the water, the levels of detected contaminants and their possible health effects, and violations of drinking water rules. Here are examples of just how diverse the drinking water sources are in Monmouth County, as reported in the CCRs.

The NJ American Water Company reports that their “Coastal North System” in Monmouth County uses water from the Potomac-Raritan-Magothy aquifer, the Glendola and Manasquan River Reservoirs in Wall, the Shark River in Neptune, and the Swimming River Reservoir in Colts Neck and Middletown. The source water for their "Lakewood/Howell area" includes almost every aquifer in the County: four deep, clay-confined aquifers – the Potomac-Raritan-Magothy, the Englishtown, the Mount Laurel-Wenonah, and the Vincentown – and one water-table aquifer, the Kirkwood-Cohansey. (Here is a simplified and a more detailed map of the principal aquifers in Monmouth.)

The Marlboro Township Water Utility Division purchases surface water from the Middlesex Water Company. This water is sourced from the Delaware and Raritan Canal, and the Spruce Run and Round Valley Reservoirs in the NJ Highlands, operated by the NJ Water Supply Authority. Marlboro also uses its own 700-foot deep wells in the Potomac-Raritan-Magothy aquifer. United Water Manalapan (also known as Matchaponix Water) that is owned by Suez Environment draws water from the Matchaponix Brook near Englishtown, that is stored in two Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) wells. This is supplemented by two deep wells in the Old Bridge aquifer.

The Sea Girt Water Department uses surface water from the Manasquan River Reservoir in Wall operated by the NJ Water Supply Authority. It also uses wells in the unconfined (water-table) Kirkwood/Cohansey aquifer, and the clay-confined Englishtown aquifer. Atlantic Highlands is one of the few water companies in Monmouth that just uses groundwater. It has four wells; three that are over 500 feet deep in the Raritan aquifer, and one 200 foot well in the Englishtown aquifer.

Want to read your CCR? It's mailed to you every summer with your water bill. You can usually also find it on your water companies website, or by Googling the name of water company and “Consumer Confidence Report”. Not only will you discover the sources of your water, you will also learn about the contaminants that may have polluted it - and how your water company is controlling those risks.

To see a list of all the public community water companies in Monmouth County:

Go to the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) page for NJ. Scroll down to “County Search”, click on “County Name” and choose Monmouth from the list. Then click on the Search button. The first group in the list will be the public community water systems serving municipalities and large facilities. The other groups are public wells used by stores and smaller facilities, Non-Transient Non-Community and Transient Non-Community water systems. Click on the name of the water company to see a fairly recent summary of their violations.

To find the primary source of water for the Public Community Water companies that supply water to your town, as well as companies that provide secondary sources:

Go to the NJDEP Drinking Water Watch. At the bottom (the blue area), click on County, then Monmouth. Click on the name of a town when the list pops up, then click on the dark blue Search button, This will give you a list of all the water companies serving that town. Click on a name to see information about their water sources, violations, etc.

To find out if your public water system is operating at a deficit or surplus according to its Water Allocation Permit:

Go to the Public Water System Deficit/Surplus database managed by the NJDEP Division of Water Supply and Geoscience. Select Monmouth County; then click on the link to each of the water systems. The database includes information such as the public water system's available water supply limits, water demand, firm capacity, and a glossary.

NJ Environmental Public Health Tracking Program - Drinking Water Quality 

The New Jersey EPHT program, working in close partnership with the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), has summarized data on water quality for over 600 community water systems in New Jersey, as well as on water quality for numerous private wells.

Links to Water-Testing Laboratories in NJ 

Click on Certified Drinking Water Labs for a list sorted by County (from the NJDEP DataMiner online database).