Cape May County, New Jersey
Stone Harbor has to find every lead service line by 2031.
The hard part is not the lead already on the books. It is the 892 connections whose material was never recorded, because under the rule every one of those has to be treated as lead until somebody proves otherwise.
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.
Stone Harbor is its own public community water system. L.2021 c.183 inventory, notification and 2031 replacement duties are the town's own.
Why the unknowns are the expensive part
892 of the connections in Stone Harbor's inventory have no recorded material, which is 28% of it. At that scale the unknowns, not the known lead, are what the programme actually costs.
A service line recorded as unknown is not a confirmed lead line. It means nobody wrote the material down, often decades ago. The rule does not let that stand: an unknown is treated as lead until it is proven otherwise.
That leaves a system two ways to close the gap, and both cost money:
- Verify each one. Send a crew, excavate or pot-hole, record the material. Accurate, and the bill scales with the number of unknowns whether or not any lead turns up.
- Replace without verifying. Faster to close out, and it means paying to replace lines that were never lead.
Which is why the order you work in is the whole decision. Verifying the connections most likely to be lead first finds the real ones sooner and spends less on the ones that were never a problem.
Where Stone Harbor stands
Stone Harbor operates its own water system (Stone Harbor WD), so the c.183 replacement duty is the town's directly in its 2024 filing.
Stone Harbor WD (PWID NJ0510001) reported 0 known lead service lines, 0 galvanised lines requiring replacement, 892 connections whose material was never recorded, 2,295 confirmed not lead, as of its 2024 submission. The 892 unknowns are the expensive part: each one has to be identified before it can be ruled out, and until it is, it counts as lead for planning purposes.
Stone Harbor WDthe town's own
- Lead service lines reported
- 0
- Galvanised requiring replacement
- 0
- Material UNKNOWN
- 892
- Confirmed not lead
- 2,295
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 your numbers
892 unknown connections reported by Stone Harbor WD脳your cost to verify one=what closing the gap blind costs
We do not fill in the right-hand side, because we do not know your unit cost, your crew or your contract, and a number we invented would be worth nothing to you.
What we change is the left: working in a ranked order finds the real lead earlier in the programme and reduces how much of that spend lands on connections that were never lead.
The same ranked list is also the resident notification the statute already requires, so it does two jobs for one piece of work.
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 Stone Harbor.
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 Stone Harbor is decides who applies.
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 Stone Harbor read
A working session and a written read for Stone Harbor: 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 Stone Harbor summary.
More about Stone Harbor
- Property scores in Stone Harbor How the town permits, measured against every other New Jersey town