For Cory Booker, water crisis awakens ghosts of past Newark water scandal originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

As a presidential candidate, Cory Booker has made environmental protections a central tenet of his social justice platform. As a United States senator, he emerged as a leading voice on the front lines of safe water for urban-dwellers.

But a growing water quality crisis gripping Newark, New Jersey, is bringing fresh attention and scrutiny of Booker's own record when he was that city's mayor -- at a time when the water system was marred by scandal.

The two crises may be separated by time, but as images spread of Newark officials handing out bottled water to residents grappling with dangerous water pollution, ongoing water problems could prove increasingly uncomfortable for his 2020 presidential campaign.

PHOTO: Co-host Meghan McCain and Senator Cory Booker appear on 'The View,' March 19, 2018. (Paula Lobo/ABC) More

"This is something that he will have to answer for," said Krista Jenkins, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University. "As with anyone who is a chief executive of a large city, everything that happened under his or her watch is going to become fodder for any of his or her rivals."

In a tweet on Wednesday, Booker called on the federal government to step in.

"Everyone deserves clean, safe water," Booker wrote. "It's shameful that our national crisis of lead-contaminated water disproportionately hits poor black and brown communities like my own."

(MORE: Newark handing out bottled water as filters appear to fail to protect residents from lead)

The latest figures from federal observers show that children in Newark's Essex County are in fact nearly four times more likely to have elevated blood lead levels than those in Flint, where cost-cutting measures resulted in lead and other toxins seeping into the drinking water supply. As a result, city officials handed out filters more than eight months ago. Following recent tests that showed elevated levels of lead in the drinking water of two houses using the filters, the EPA recommended Friday that local officials in Newark distribute bottled water to residents.

In a speech in New York City on Monday, Booker initially sought to address the water crisis in Newark but he did so obliquely, lamenting it as an example of "environmental injustice" without mentioning the city's name.

PHOTO: A pallet of bottled water is delivered to a recreation center, Aug. 13, 2019 in Newark, New Jersey. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) More

The Watershed scandal

Those who have followed the issue of drinking water quality in Newark say the subject dredges up uncomfortable memories of the years Booker served as mayor, from 2006 to 2013.

Until 2013, the job of keeping water safe belonged to a quasi-public agency called the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation. It fell under the purview of the mayor, who appointed board members and who sat as chair.

In 2014, the New Jersey state comptroller published an investigation into the agency's stewardship of the city's infrastructure that was highly critical of Booker's administration. The investigative report "found that from 2008 through 2011, the [watershed] recklessly and improperly spent millions of dollars of public funds with little to no oversight by either its Board of Trustees or the City" – both of which, at the time, were led by Booker.

(MORE: The long way home again: Cory Booker returns to Newark for his 2020 campaign)

The state comptroller's report referred several cases to law enforcement. Federal prosecutors brought charges against eight people involved in the watershed scheme. Six of them pleaded guilty and five of them received lengthy prison sentences.

One of them, Linda Watkins Brashear, the watershed's executive director from 2007 to 2013, was sentenced in 2017 to more than eight years in prison for accepting nearly $1 million in kickback payments for awarding no-show contracts.

Story continues