Clean Drinking Water from the Hackensack River

By Bill Sheehan, Hackensack Riverkeeper

»Unlike most rivers in North America, a transnational corporation controls half of the Hackensack River. United Water Resources owns the rights to all water in the river’s upper reaches and sells it to nearly 1 million customers in both New York and New Jersey. Founded in 1865 as the Hackensack Water Co. and reorganized in 1995 as United Water New Jersey, the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the French company Suez, which itself is a subsidiary of Gaz de France, the French government-owned gas and water utility. As you can see, private enterprise has ruled much of our river for a very long time.

For more than 100 years, the water company maintained large tracts of forest to help ensure good water quality. But as time marched on, it began relying more and more on filtration technologies to transform the increasingly turbid water into a clear, drinkable product. By the late 1980s, corporate leadership decided that the forests were no longer needed and began transferring large swaths of them to a spin-off development company called River Vale Realty. This was done despite the fact that development was responsible for degrading the water in the first place.

With the first transfer, local watershed advocates (myself among them) raised holy hell and the water company had a war on its hands. The war ended in 1993 when Environmental Defense brokered an agreement that forced the company to take back most of the woodlands from the developer.

At the same time (and partly in response to what we had gone through), the New Jersey Legislature passed the Watershed Moratorium Act. Designed to protect the state’s water supply by protecting watershed buffer lands, the act established a Watershed Review Board. Among other oversights, the board was given the task of reviewing proposals by water purveyors to sell, lease or otherwise transfer any conservation lands supported by ratepayers.

In 2004, Hackensack Riverkeeper learned that United Water had granted an easement to a builder to cross conservation land in the town of River Vale, N.J. Upon receiving word that the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had issued a Stream Encroachment Permit to the developer, I immediately called the DEP and spoke with the staffer who processed the permit application. I asked when the easement had been approved by

Capt. Bill Sheehan prepares to speak to a group of local activists.

the Watershed Review Board and was stunned to be asked in reply, “What’s the Watershed Review Board?” At that point I knew the permit wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

My next call was to then-DEP Commissioner Brad Campbell who, after an internal investigation, personally issued a Notice of Permit Revocation. Having put out that fire, we then petitioned the board for a public hearing regarding the obvious violation of the act. That petition led to a prolonged settlement process during which United Water self-audited all transactions regarding its conservation lands and uncovered no less than 165 violations.

As you read these words, settlement negotiations are drawing to a close and our watershed is clearly the big winner. As part of the settlement, United Water will soon grant the DEP a conservation easement on all 3,400 acres of watershed buffer land it owns in New Jersey. In addition, the company will establish a $1 million Conservation Trust Fund to help purchase additional conservation lands. Finally, the company has agreed to support our River Cleanup Program and environmental education efforts through corporate sponsorship.

Without question, preserving critically important watershed buffer lands protects drinking water and makes good environmental (and economic) sense — now and always.

Hackensack Riverkeeper supporters kayak the upper reaches of the watershed.