By Jersey City (NJ) Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy
April 21, 2008

I recently remarked in my State of the City address that Jersey City continues to achieve significant and rapid quality of life improvements and is a great place to live, work, and do business. We have worked hard to improve public safety and substantially reduce crime; employment opportunities are increasing while unemployment figures are falling; and a commercial and residential redevelopment renaissance continues to flourish not only in our waterfront neighborhoods but in other parts of the city as well. We are also improving our parks and creating new cultural activities and environmental amenities.

One of our greatest civic achievements is in our municipal water system infrastructure and services. The municipal drinking water system serves more than 239,000 people. The filtration plant has a capacity of 80 mgd (million gallons per day), a 23 mile aqueduct, 275 miles of water mains, an 11.3 billion gallon water reservoir (the Boonton Reservoir), 5,688 acres of protected watershed, 3,500 fire hydrants, and 32,000 water meters. Jersey City entered into a public-private partnership with United Water to operate, maintain and manage the system, including customer and emergency services; billing, collection and payment processing; and marketing excess water. As a result, we have contained costs and improved customer services.

This partnership is not the first time Jersey City broke new ground. On September 26, 1908, 100 years ago, the Jersey City Water Supply Company, became the first major city in the nation to implement full-scale water chlorination to help ensure the public health and safety at the Boonton Reservoir water treatment plant. Following this successful demonstration, most major U.S. cities adopted water chlorination over the next decade. I call attention to this now because our citizens, commercial establishments and industry take safe drinking water for granted, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Still, in this era of heightened public sensitivity to environmental and toxic risks it makes sense to remind ourselves how far we have really come at generating citizen confidence in our water infrastructure and services. The water systems in all major American cities are expensive to build, operate and maintain, so it is important to remember what those investments buy in the way of public health and welfare.

Local elected officials in Jersey City were well aware of what was known as the mortality “penalty” associated with urban dwelling in the early 1900s. Indeed the social reform movement in England and America in the 20th century was directed at improving the living conditions of many city dwellers. The then-normal high mortality rates were in large part caused by infectious diseases; waterborne infectious diseases were particularly troublesome. Modern sanitation science was in its infancy in the nation, and often, sewage systems and drinking water systems were intermingled by default if not by design.

The rapidly declining mortality rates from 1900 to 1940 and the increase in life expectancy at birth from 47 to 63 years in major urban centers coincided with the introduction of drinking water treatment via chlorination. What was once a major cause of death – infectious waterborne disease – today only accounts for a small portion of total mortality.

A landmark study1 authored by Harvard University researchers David Cutler and Grant Miller examined the introduction of clean drinking water technologies – chlorination and filtration in major cities in the early twentieth century. The authors summarized, “…clean water was responsible for nearly half the total mortality reduction in major cities, three quarters of the infant mortality reduction, and nearly two thirds of the child mortality reduction.”

Infectious diseases such as: tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrhea and enteritis, typhoid fever, meningitis, malaria, smallpox, and influenza, were common in the early 1900s. In 1900 the average urban center death rate from typhoid fever was 47 out of every 1,000 people. By 1936, coincidental with widespread utilization of drinking water chlorination, the average urban center typhoid fever death rate declined to two out of every 1,000 people. The researchers state that 91 percent of the decline is attributable to municipal intervention with clean water technologies.

The public health benefits of municipal clean water go well beyond the dramatic reductions in death from typhoid fever and other waterborne infectious diseases. They include increased life span, increased productivity, reductions in number of days of illness, and reductions in health care costs associated with infectious diseases.

Jersey City is proud of this public health achievement, and is committed to maintaining this important public benefit. Every dollar invested in clean water and sewer systems yields benefits that are greater than the investment. The US Conference of Mayors recently reported that local government spends more than $82 billion a year for water and sewer infrastructure and services in the nation’s cities. This may look like a heavy investment, but in Jersey City we know that it has yielded tremendous returns in the form of healthy and productive citizenry.