Residents of over 50,000 NJ homes drinking polluted water - 12.5% of wells fail to meet standards

August 28, 2008 - State: 1 in 8 private wells contaminated
Officials urge more testing

DEP estimates that there are over 400,000 private residential drinking water wells in NJ. Over 51,000 of these wells have been sampled, but 350,000 have not.

DEP data from 2002 - 2007 indicate that 12.5 % of over 51,000 residential wells that were sampled fail to meet drinking water standards and are polluted. This rate does not include more than 18% of sampled wells poisoned by toxic lead. Assuming that this large data set and 12.5% failure rate are representative of all 400,000 wells, means that more than 50,000 NJ households are drinking unsafe water.

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