Editor’s note: Over the last few weeks, New Jersey’s largest city has been experiencing a health crisis, as environmental officials found high levels of lead contamination in Newark’s drinking water. As the following historical article from 1891 shows, this incident is not the first scandal to roil Newark’s water supply.

The Newark Water Supply

In a few days or weeks at the furthest, Newark will come into partial control of her new $2,000,000 water supply, for which she is paying the outrageous price of $6,000,000 to the Lehigh Valley Railway Company under the guise of the East Jersey Water Company. The whole history of this water contract has been so bad that the Newark newspapers are afraid that even in the execution, new frauds may have come into existence.



The Daily Advertiser of yesterday expressed suspicions as to the mariner in which the work of constructing the reservoirs and pipe lines has been done, and the fact that the city has eleven years in which to discover defects and insist on their remedy, appears to afford it very little comfort. It is suspicious that in the provisional acceptance of the plant, the Street and Water Board may once more play into the hands of the robber corporation and so hamper the city that it will have no legal standing should flaws in plan or construction be discovered hereafter.



The Board has ordered its engineers to go over the contracts and specifications seriatim, and report any discrepancies between them and the work actually done, and report the same, if any are found, as a guide to the Board in making the preliminary acceptance. The Advertiser thereupon sounds this remarkable note of warning—remarkable, because it is strange that it should be thought necessary to give such advice at all:—



Members of the Board must be very careful how far they pledge the city in advance. Any declaration setting forth the views of the Board on any part of the work should have in view the possible requirements of the future, which are properly guarded in the contract. To nullify the strongest sections of the water contract by any general declaration made now, setting forth what should be done, either in general or specific terms, would be reprehensible to the last degree. Such action might naturally follow the Adoption of such resolutions as those just passed by the Board. If the Board should fix the limit of the work, the company could in the future fall back on the action of the Board and claim that nothing more was required of it.

It would be strange indeed if a public body should commit itself on a doutful [sic] matter, when it had eleven years ahead in which to judge from actual experience. But, of course, a Newark paper is better able than we to judge of the capabilities of Newark officials, either for blundering or for selling out their trust. We must therefore assume that there is serious danger that this ill omened job, which began with huge rascalities, may be brought to a close with a series of small ones.



Source: The Sunday Morning News (Jersey City, November 22, 1891)