ESSEX County, New Jersey
Belleville knows where its lead lines are. The work is replacing them by 2031.
Its filing records 4,411 connections to replace and no connections of unrecorded material, so the question here is scheduling and cost rather than searching. Towns still carrying unknowns have to pay to find theirs before they can plan at all.
What the law requires
P.L.2021 c.183 obliges every public community water system in New Jersey to inventory every service connection, notify the public about what it finds, and replace all lead service lines by 2031. Progress is reported to the state each year and posted publicly.
Belleville's lead-line duty is split across more than one water system. Belleville is served by more than one public community water system, at least one of which is the town's own. The c.183 duty is split, and which parcels fall to whom has to be resolved before anything is promised.
Why a known count is a scheduling problem rather than a search
Belleville's filing puts 4,411 connections on the replacement list and leaves nothing unidentified. That removes the most expensive uncertainty in this programme, which is paying to find out what you have.
What is left is a scheduling and disruption problem: which streets, in what order, alongside which paving and utility work, and how the required resident notification is handled for each one.
Ordering still decides the cost, but the thing being ordered is replacement work rather than investigation.
Where Belleville stands
Belleville is served by 2 public community water systems: 1 operated by the town (Belleville WD) and 1 regional supplier (Newark WD). The c.183 duty follows the system, not the municipal boundary, so Belleville's own obligation is what its own systems reported in its 2024 filing.
Belleville WD (PWID NJ0701001) reported 4,411 known lead service lines, 0 galvanised lines requiring replacement, 0 connections whose material was never recorded, 3,112 confirmed not lead, as of its 2024 submission.
Newark WD (PWID NJ0714001) reported 0 known lead lines and 4,695 unknown-material connections in 2024 across its whole service area, which covers more than Belleville. That figure is the system's, not the town's, and the share falling inside Belleville has to be resolved parcel by parcel before anyone can put a number on it.
Belleville WDthe town's own
- Lead service lines reported
- 4,411
- Galvanised requiring replacement
- 0
- Material UNKNOWN
- 0
- Confirmed not lead
- 3,112
Newark WD
- Lead service lines reported
- 0
- Galvanised requiring replacement
- 0
- Material UNKNOWN
- 4,695
- Confirmed not lead
- 35,856
What the state publishes, and what it does not
Published, free
NJDEP publishes how many connections each system reported as lead, galvanised, unknown and confirmed non-lead. Those are the numbers above. Systems over 3,300 people also have to put an address lookup on their own website.
Not published anywhere
Which of those unknowns to open first. The state publishes counts, not an order, and an address lookup answers one property at a time. Nobody publishes a ranked list, which is the thing a crew schedule is actually built from.
That gap is what we work in. We hold construction year for every parcel in New Jersey and the plumbing permit history behind it, so we can put a system's unknowns in order and show the evidence for each one. It is a ranking, not a diagnosis: it says where to look first, and it never claims a particular property has lead.
The arithmetic, with the count already settled
4,411 connections already identified for replacement脳your cost to replace one=the programme, with no search to pay for first
The count is settled, so the variable is replacement cost per connection and the order the work is done in, not how much finding it will cost.
Funding, and what gates it
We have not confirmed this town's hazard mitigation plan yet.
Federal hazard-mitigation funding requires a current FEMA-approved plan. We match plans automatically by county and jurisdiction name, and this one did not resolve. It does not mean the plan is missing.
That is a gap in our record, not a finding about Belleville.
Lead replacement is financed through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, with principal forgiveness available. The borrower is the water system, which is the town itself only where the town runs its own water. Which of those Belleville is decides who applies.
What we have not measured in Belleville yet
- We have not baked Belleville's impervious and runoff layers yet, so there is no number here. That is different from the number being zero.
- We have not baked Belleville's storm-drainage layer yet, so there is no number here. That is different from the number being zero.
How we know
- FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer flood zones and base flood elevation
- NJDEP MS4 outfalls the mapped storm-drainage network
- OpenFEMA HMA subapplications what happened to grant applications like yours
- FEMA Hazard Mitigation Plan Statuses the grant gate
- NJDEP service line inventory what each water system reported to the state, by year
Built from published federal and state records. Informational only, and not engineering, legal or funding advice. Confirm anything that matters with your municipal engineer and your State Hazard Mitigation Officer.
The Belleville read
A working session and a written read for Belleville: your unknowns in a ranked order with the evidence per connection, what your system has already filed, the funding route that matches who owns the duty here, and the resident notice drafted from the same list. Paid engagement, scoped in the first call.
Prefer to read first? Download the one-page Belleville summary.
More about Belleville
- ADU rules in Belleville Whether an accessory dwelling unit is allowed, how big, and what it costs
- Property scores in Belleville How the town permits, measured against every other New Jersey town