New Jersey Water Systems Ranked by Exposure Burden — 2026
New Jersey community water utilities ranked by a population-weighted 5-year violation severity score combining EPA SDWIS enforcement data with EPA Community Water System Service Area Boundaries v3 population estimates.
ranked
with demographic data
vintage
boundaries (March 2026)
These 50 New Jersey water utilities have the highest population-weighted violation burden over the past five years. Scoring combines EPA health-based and treatment-technique violations on a linear scale (10× / 6×), adds a log-scaled contribution for monitoring/reporting lapses, and applies a 20× weight for currently-unresolved health violations. The total is multiplied by each system's population served.
| Rank | Water System | State | Pop served | Exposure burden | Health viol. (5yr) | T&T | MR | Unresolved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trenton Water Works | New Jersey | 180,147 | 14,575 | 3 | 1 | 70 | 2 |
| 2 | Passaic Valley Water Commission | New Jersey | 278,576 | 4,807 | 1 | 1 | 2 | — |
| 3 | Perth Amboy Water Department | New Jersey | 50,360 | 4,603 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 3 |
| 4 | Newark Water Department | New Jersey | 256,503 | 4,258 | 1 | 1 | 1 | — |
| 5 | South River W Department | New Jersey | 16,078 | 2,878 | 6 | 6 | 11 | 4 |
| 6 | Bloomfield Water Department | New Jersey | 36,733 | 2,792 | 5 | 4 | 4 | — |
| 7 | Belleville Water Department | New Jersey | 27,993 | 2,556 | 3 | 3 | 15 | 2 |
| 8 | City of Camden | New Jersey | 35,577 | 1,884 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 9 | Bridgeton City Water Department | New Jersey | 22,922 | 1,689 | 3 | 0 | 69 | 2 |
| 10 | Nutley Water Department | New Jersey | 16,799 | 1,523 | 3 | 3 | 11 | 2 |
| 11 | Montville Twp Mua | New Jersey | 17,179 | 1,517 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| 12 | Jefferson Twp W U Lk Hop | New Jersey | 4,611 | 1,257 | 8 | 8 | 44 | 7 |
| 13 | Verona Water Department | New Jersey | 14,558 | 1,224 | 4 | 0 | 42 | 2 |
| 14 | Milltown W Department | New Jersey | 3,506 | 1,111 | 11 | 4 | 12 | 9 |
| 15 | Vineland Water & Sewer Utility | New Jersey | 52,382 | 1,032 | 1 | 1 | 49 | — |
| 16 | Lincoln Park Water Department | New Jersey | 5,115 | 1,011 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| 17 | Franklin Township Dept of Public Works | New Jersey | 45,304 | 842 | 1 | 1 | 13 | — |
| 18 | Moorestown Water Dept | New Jersey | 20,594 | 805 | 1 | 1 | 35 | 1 |
| 19 | Montclair Water Bureau | New Jersey | 38,385 | 686 | 1 | 1 | 4 | — |
| 20 | Cedar Grove Water Department | New Jersey | 6,150 | 666 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 21 | Atlantic City Mua | New Jersey | 32,881 | 613 | 1 | 1 | 11 | — |
| 22 | Butler Water Department | New Jersey | 8,166 | 570 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 1 |
| 23 | Mahwah Water Department | New Jersey | 14,711 | 569 | 1 | 1 | 21 | 1 |
| 24 | South Brunswick Twp W Di | New Jersey | 28,782 | 523 | 1 | 1 | 11 | — |
| 25 | Kearny Water Department | New Jersey | 32,029 | 522 | 1 | 1 | 0 | — |
| 26 | Freehold Borough Water D | New Jersey | 13,284 | 516 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 1 |
| 27 | Wanaque W Department | New Jersey | 10,142 | 509 | 3 | 3 | 5 | — |
| 28 | Lacey Twp Mua | New Jersey | 24,484 | 443 | 1 | 1 | 10 | — |
| 29 | Ringwood Water Department | New Jersey | 6,203 | 440 | 3 | 3 | 16 | 1 |
| 30 | Veolia Water New Jersey Hackensack | New Jersey | 714,119 | 430 | 0 | 0 | 1 | — |
| 31 | Sparta Twp Water Utility - Lake Mohawk | New Jersey | 10,607 | 409 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 1 |
| 32 | Middlesex Water Company | New Jersey | 164,407 | 404 | 0 | 0 | 11 | — |
| 33 | Jackson Twp Mua | New Jersey | 18,289 | 345 | 1 | 1 | 15 | — |
| 34 | Saddle Brook Water Dept | New Jersey | 6,052 | 325 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 1 |
| 35 | Maple Shade Water Department | New Jersey | 17,234 | 292 | 1 | 1 | 2 | — |
| 36 | Keyport Water Department | New Jersey | 7,133 | 274 | 1 | 1 | 16 | 1 |
| 37 | Hawthorne Water Department | New Jersey | 12,421 | 233 | 1 | 1 | 5 | — |
| 38 | Roxbury Twp W Department-Sky V | New Jersey | 4,315 | 232 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 1 |
| 39 | Nj American Water - Coastal North | New Jersey | 384,699 | 232 | 0 | 0 | 1 | — |
| 40 | East Orange Water Commission | New Jersey | 55,506 | 231 | 0 | 0 | 37 | — |
| 41 | Jersey City Mua | New Jersey | 254,114 | 229 | 0 | 0 | 1 | — |
| 42 | Paulsboro Water Department | New Jersey | 5,968 | 225 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 1 |
| 43 | Hammonton Water Department | New Jersey | 9,910 | 181 | 1 | 1 | 12 | — |
| 44 | Boonton Water Department | New Jersey | 8,851 | 167 | 1 | 1 | 14 | — |
| 45 | Matawan Borough Water De | New Jersey | 9,888 | 158 | 1 | 1 | 0 | — |
| 46 | Brigantine Water Department | New Jersey | 7,638 | 136 | 1 | 1 | 5 | — |
| 47 | Nj American Water - Short Hills | New Jersey | 226,128 | 136 | 0 | 0 | 1 | — |
| 48 | Veolia Water New Jersey Toms River | New Jersey | 112,989 | 136 | 0 | 0 | 3 | — |
| 49 | New Brunswick W Dept | New Jersey | 41,993 | 133 | 0 | 0 | 18 | — |
| 50 | Bordentown Water Departm | New Jersey | 7,285 | 130 | 1 | 1 | 4 | — |
How to read this ranking
Each row links to a full utility profile with violation history, lead testing results, and service-area ZIPs. The demographic context columns are from independent data sources (ACS, not EJScreen) and are provided for readers who want to examine equity patterns alongside the operational data.
See the full methodology for calculation details, data vintages, and known limitations.
Frequently asked questions
What is "exposure burden"?
A single score combining how many people a water system serves with how severe its federal drinking-water violations have been over the last five years. The formula is population_served × severity_score, where severity_score linearly sums contamination-related events — 10× per health-based violation, 6× per treatment-technique violation, 20× per currently-unresolved health violation — and adds a logarithmic contribution from procedural violations (2× × log10(1 + monitoring_count), 1× × log10(1 + other_count)). The log scaling prevents large utilities with many sampling sites from dominating the list purely through paperwork accumulation. Units are arbitrary — only relative ranks are meaningful. Scaled by 1,000 for display readability.
Why weight violations by severity?
A raw 5-year violation count would put systems with many late monitoring reports above systems with actual contamination events — because a large utility with 100 sampling sites failing 5% of them accumulates more MR violations than a tiny utility with real tap-water contamination. The severity weights come from the EPA Safe Drinking Water Act enforcement hierarchy: maximum contaminant level violations and treatment technique failures are Priority 1 (actual public-health risk), while monitoring/reporting violations are Priority 2 (procedural). We publish the weights so readers can recompute the ranking under different assumptions.
Why multiply by population?
Two systems with the same violation record affect very different numbers of people when one serves 500,000 residents and the other serves 3,000. A ranking of "worst systems" that ignores this conflates violation-per-system with violation-per-person-year. Population-weighting is standard in environmental-epidemiology work (e.g., "person-years at exposure") and prevents a list dominated by small rural utilities with easy-to-accumulate monitoring gaps.
Is this the same as the Most Unresolved Violations list?
No. Unresolved violations count only currently-open health-based violations as of the latest EPA snapshot — a point-in-time view of where the Safe Drinking Water Act is being violated right now. Exposure burden is a 5-year accumulated view that weights all violations by severity and population. A system with one serious contamination event affecting a large city can outrank a system with many small unresolved monitoring gaps; the two lists surface different facts.
Where does the data come from?
Violation categorization and counts come from EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) via the ECHO enforcement database, refreshed monthly. Population served comes from EPA Community Water System Service Area Boundaries v3 cross-walked to Census 2020 population via Microsoft building-footprint weights. Demographics come from Census ACS 2019-2023.
ZipCheckup is an independent public-data tool. We are a referral service and do not provide water testing, remediation, or utility services. Rankings reflect publicly-available federal data and are provided for informational purposes. For issues with your specific water system, contact your local water utility or state drinking water program.