Lawrence Township residents whose water is provided by Trenton Water Works can speak with the company’s representatives one-on-one during a special forum set for May 15 at the Lawrence Senior Center at 30 E. Darrah Lane.
The forum, which will run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., is part of a series of educational forums designed to encourage attendees to get more information about the City of Trenton-run water utility.
Forums have been held in the City of Trenton and in Hamilton, Ewing and Hopewell townships. The Trenton Water Works serves customers in the City of Trenton and some areas in Lawrence, Ewing, Hopewell and Hamilton townships.
There will be a question-and-answer session with Trenton Water Works representatives, including the director, the assistant director and an engineer for the water utility at the May 15 session.
“The Trenton Water Works management team appreciates the opportunity to speak directly with our customers,” said Shing-Fu Hsueh, director of the City of Trenton’s Department of Water and Sewer. The department operates the Trenton Water Works.
“I will be participating in our question-and-answer session, in addition to Assistant Director Kristin Epstein and an engineer from our water filtration plant who will talk about the water treatment process,” Hsueh said.
The public education forums began last year to allow customers a chance to speak to Trenton Water Works representatives on issues that range from water quality, regulatory expectations and operations to initiatives such as the lead service line replacement program.
The lead service line replacement program is a $15 million capital project to replace residential lead and galvanized steel water service lines with safe copper lines in affected households in the City of Trenton, and parts of Lawrence, Hopewell and Hamilton townships served by the water utility.
The water utility has come under fire for violating drinking water standards over the past two years, but most of the violations did not affect customers’ health or safety. Emergency notifications and “boil water” advisories were not always needed.
Most recently, the Trenton Water Works issued a letter to alert customers that it had missed one deadline to correct a violation of drinking water standards and that it would miss the deadline to correct another violation – but that the water was still safe to drink.
The Feb. 4 letter acknowledged that the water utility had failed to remediate maximum contamination levels for two drinking water contaminants – haloacetic acids and trihalomethanes – within one year of their initial exceedances. Both are water disinfectant by-products.
The water utility missed the Dec. 8, 2018 deadline to remediate the haloacetic acids maximum contaminant level. It discovered that it had missed the maximum contaminant level of 60 parts per billion during the fourth quarter of 2017.
The Trenton Water Works also exceeded the maximum contaminant level for total trihalomethanes, which is 80 parts per billion, during the first, third and fourth quarters of 2018.
Based on the fourth-quarter 2018 exceedance, the water utility would not be able to comply with the requirement to remediate the issue by the one-year deadline of March 5, 2019, the letter stated.