Morris County, New Jersey
Butler reports no lead service lines left to replace.
Its filing with the state records no lead, no galvanised lines requiring replacement and no connections of unrecorded material, against 2,408 confirmed not lead. That is a reading of the filing rather than a guarantee about the pipes, and it puts Butler in a different position from a town still working through unknowns.
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.
Butler is its own public community water system. L.2021 c.183 inventory, notification and 2031 replacement duties are the town's own.
What a completed inventory still asks of Butler
Reporting nothing left to replace closes the search, not the obligation. The duty under c.183 is continuing: the inventory has to stay current as connections are replaced or added, the public notification requirement does not lapse, and any connection that turns up without a recorded material re-enters the process as an unknown.
The practical risk here is a records risk rather than a pipe risk. A filing that reports everything confirmed rests on the quality of the underlying records, and the places that gets tested are older streets, properties that changed hands before the records were digitised, and connections altered during work nobody logged.
So the useful question in Butler is not where the lead is. It is which confirmations rest on thin evidence, and that is answerable from construction year and plumbing permit history.
Where Butler stands
Butler operates its own water system (Butler WD), so the c.183 replacement duty is the town's directly in its 2024 filing.
Butler WD (PWID NJ1403001) reported 0 known lead service lines, 0 galvanised lines requiring replacement, 0 connections whose material was never recorded, 2,408 confirmed not lead, as of its 2024 submission. With no unknowns and no lead reported, this system's inventory is complete on its own account, which is a materially different position from a town still resolving unknowns.
Butler WDthe town's own
- Lead service lines reported
- 0
- Galvanised requiring replacement
- 0
- Material UNKNOWN
- 0
- Confirmed not lead
- 2,408
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.
What the numbers here can and cannot tell you
Butler reports nothing left to identify, so there is no discovery cost to work out. What is worth costing here is keeping the inventory current, and evidencing the confirmations that rest on the thinnest records.
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 Butler.
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 Butler is decides who applies.
What we have not measured in Butler yet
- We have not baked Butler's impervious and runoff layers yet, so there is no number here. That is different from the number being zero.
- We have not baked Butler'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 Butler read
A working session and a written read for Butler: 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 Butler summary.
More about Butler
- ADU rules in Butler Whether an accessory dwelling unit is allowed, how big, and what it costs
- Property scores in Butler How the town permits, measured against every other New Jersey town