New Jersey American Water to make temporary changes in water treatment process

New Jersey’s largest water utility company New Jersey American Water has announced temporary changes to its water treatment process at its Raritan-Millstone and Canal Road Water Treatment plants, which serve the central and northern parts of the state.

As part of this initiative, the water utility company will change the water treatment process from a chloramine (combined) residual to free chlorine residual at the water treatment plants, which serve its customers in Essex, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Morris, Somerset and Union counties.

New Jersey American Water, which is a subsidiary of American Water, said that it has been using chloramines in its water treatment process since the 1970s.

New Jersey American Water Environmental Compliance and Water Quality director Matthew Csik said: “This periodic, scheduled change in disinfectant is a standard water-treatment practice that allows us to continue to provide safe, high-quality water for our customers.

“We perform this distribution system maintenance programme every year as an added measure to further disinfect the pipelines in our distribution system.”

The temporary water treatment process is scheduled to begin from 12 January 2021 and continue until the end of April 2021.

The company said that during this period the water could have a slight taste and smell of chlorine.

New Jersey American Water said that the customers who want to reduce the taste of chlorine can place water in an uncovered glass container in the refrigerator overnight in order to help the quicker dissipation of chlorine.

Csik added: “As always, we will continue to monitor water quality in the system to provide that customers receive water that meets or is better than federal and state drinking water standards.”