CLOSE NJ Gov. Phil Murphy announced efforts to better track and notify parents when lead is found in school drinking water at a Bergenfield elementary school on Monday, Oct. 7, 2019. Stacey Barchenger, USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

This one may be hard to believe, but here goes: New Jersey would not be scrambling to confront the long-festering crisis of lead-contaminated drinking water if not for Donald J. Trump.

Yes, that President Trump, who has shown little regard for the state that is home to his posh golf course and once bent over backward to accommodate his glitzy casino empire before it collapsed under the weight of bankruptcies.

Yet New Jersey's top officials are now in a collective cover-their-hide mode since the Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency ordered Newark to begin distributing bottled water in early August.

That order came because tests in just two homes showed that water filters distributed by the city failed to adequately remove lead from the drinking water. This tiny sampling — "data points,'' as Gov. Phil Murphy called them — cast doubt on the reliability of the 38,000 other city-issued filters

But to many observers, two homes seemed like such a tiny sample to prompt a red-alert response that led to long lines of furious and confused Newark residents waiting for a basic necessity like water. It also gave rise to conspiracy theories. Was Trump deviously finding a way to humiliate U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a potential 2020 rival, by sparking a crisis that would eventually lead the national press to revisit the scandal-plagued city water program during his tenure as Newark mayor? Was he trying to embarrass Murphy, who lashes out at the daily depredations of Trump?

Construction work can be seen along Keer avenue where the city is replacing lead pipes with copper piping on Monday, Sept. 23, 2019, in Newark. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com)

Regardless of the real or imagined motive, the fact is that Trump's EPA not only prompted a panic-mode response in Newark but has also turned the spotlight on the lead water problem flowing beyond Newark's boundaries. And that review has so far turned up two troubling findings:

The state has long known about how widespread the problem is and collectively yawned. And the cost is so enormous that the state, at best, is only positioned to respond in piecemeal fashion.

Just in recent weeks, we've learned a lot about the silent menace of lead-poisoned water. Lead's irreversible harm — including developmental delays and brain damage — is most damaging to young children.

And we have learned that it could be leaching from old pipes all over the state. A recent USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey report said nearly a third of school districts in the state had found dangerously high levels of lead in their water since 2016.

Data from the state Department of Environmental Protection shows where the greatest concentration of lead service lines are in New Jersey. (Photo: Courtesy of NJ Future)

Some older, urban school districts have been distributing bottled water to their kids for years rather than have them sip from the fountains. The Schools Development Authority, which is charged with building new urban schools, refused to do anything about it.

The state has largely given lip service to modernizing water infrastructure. Nearly $100 million pegged for water-related projects in public schools, approved last year by voters as part of a much larger $500 million bond act, has been bogged down in foot-dragging bureaucracy.

That has given Murphy's nemesis, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, an opening to pounce.

Sweeney has been on a campaign lately to prove that Murphy is simply not up to the task of governing. Sweeney will head a special committee to investigate failures at NJ Transit, partly to point the finger of blame at Murphy. The water funding is the latest target.

"The bond act we passed was 11 months ago," Sweeney said last week. "Eleven months ago. This shouldn’t take that long to get these funds to make our schools safer and our water safer for the kids in schools."

Yet Sweeney's finger pointing is an exercise in hypocrisy. As Senate president, Sweeney has unilateral power to move legislation in the Senate, but more than 30 bills targeting New Jersey's water problems have sat gathering mold in the Legislature. Worse, a joint legislative committee in 2017 offered a comprehensive study of the state's water problems — including a finding that millions of gallons of water leak through old pipes.

And what happened to the panel's report and the legislation it spawned? It landed with a thud, forgotten until recently.

Murphy, meanwhile, is slated on Thursday to announce his "comprehensive strategy" to deal with the crisis. The announcement will coincide with the roll-out of recommendations by Jersey Works, a task force of environmentalists and public health officials.

The group is expected to recommend that Murphy issue an executive order declaring lead to be a public health emergency. That would seem to be an easy lift, given that Murphy vowed as a candidate to make lead removal a priority.

But an executive order would put immediate pressure on the Murphy administration to follow through and deliver.

And that would cost money — far in excess of the $100 million from last year's bond act — that the debt-plagued state really does not have. New Jersey has the second-worst credit rating among the 50 states and District of Columbia. Its debt is more than three times the state's assets — the worst ratio in the country, according to one report.

The experience in Newark is a reminder of the state's weakened ability to respond.

Newark is being bailed out by a $120 million bond act from Essex County, and the Port Authority has agreed to rework the city's lease to free up another $155 million to replace the city's toxic pipes. But the state of New Jersey? It struggled just to gather enough water bottles for city residents.

And even if the state were in a stronger fiscal position, it's hard to believe that the two most powerful Democrats would be able to negotiate a deal. The deepening feud portends more gridlock.

Odds are high that Murphy's "comprehensive strategy" will also gather dust in the State Library with other long-forgotten reports and promised strategies.

Maybe Trump — when he isn't stonewalling the impeachment inquiry or firing off tweets or shredding political norms, or when his EPA is not busy rolling back environmental regulations — can help. He's already made a contribution to the debate, whether he intended to or not.

Support local journalism Covering our local communities takes time and resources. Readers help support these efforts with their subscriptions. Support our journalism and become a subscriber today. Click here for our special offers.

Read or Share this story: https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/charles-stile/2019/10/10/trumps-epa-forced-nj-make-lead-water-priority/3918493002/