New Jersey American Water is urging its customers in Monmouth County to discontinue all nonessential water use and outdoor water use after three water mains collapsed at the company’s Swimming River Water Treatment Plant in Tinton Falls.
New Jersey American Water has also issued a precautionary boil water advisory for customers in Monmouth County.
Please note that this is a standard procedure whenever water pressure is lost as a precaution. New Jersey American Water will provide information as to when the advisory is lifted.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection requires that the company issue the following advisory:
New Jersey American Water has determined that a potential or actual threat to the quality of water being provided to you currently exists. Therefore until further notice, bring tap water to a rolling boil for one minute and allow to cool before using for consumption; drinking, ice cubes, washing vegetables and fruit, and for brushing teeth. Please continue to boil your water until you are notified that the water quality is acceptable.
New Jersey American Water also recommends the following steps:
• Throw away uncooked food or beverages or ice cubes if made with tap water during the day of the advisory;
• Keep boiled water in the refrigerator for drinking;
• Rinse hand-washed dishes for a minute in diluted bleach (one tablespoon of household bleach per gallon of tap water) or clean your dishes in a dishwasher using the hot wash cycle and dry cycle.
• Do not swallow water while you are showering or bathing;
• Provide pets with boiled water after cooling;
• Do not use home filtering devices in place of boiling or using bottled water; most home water filters will not provide adequate protection from microorganisms;
• Use only boiled water to treat minor injuries.
Please be advised that the company is doing all it can to ensure your water is of the highest quality. New Jersey American Water will notify customers immediately when the advisory is lifted.
New Jersey American Water is working on temporary measures to restore normal operations at its Swimming River Water Treatment Plant. The plant delivers 36 million gallons of water each day to 55,000 customer accounts.
Amends Budget to Restrict Spending to Lower Levels than FY2008 and FY2009 Budgets, Provides Sound $600 Million Surplus
Press Release
Trenton, NJ – For the third year in a row, Governor Chris Christie today signed into law a constitutionally balanced budget that delivers on key priorities for the people of New Jersey without raising taxes. The Governor’s Fiscal Year 2013 Budget as enacted spends $31.7 billion, which is lower than the Governor’s originally proposed budget as delivered in February 2012 and lower than the budget passed by the Legislature. This year’s budget continues the return to fiscal discipline and controlled spending, while focusing on funding critical priorities that speak to the needs of all New Jerseyans. The Fiscal Year 2013 Budget is smaller than both fiscal years 2008 and 2009, while still increasing aid to schools to the highest level of state spending on K-12 education in the state’s history.
Governor Christie said, “The budget the Legislature sent me violated two core priorities of this Administration – it denied tax relief to our hard working, middle-class families while proposing an $800 million tax increase and rejected fiscal responsibility by including millions in new spending that threatened to undo the hard won progress of the last two years. I am unwilling to surrender the gains we have made to establish fiscal responsibility in the state budget by raising taxes on our people at a time when they need and deserve tax relief. The budget I am signing today reverses irresponsible funding decisions, establishes funding levels based on realistic and responsible revenue assumptions, and increases our surplus to a healthy level that paves the way for continued economic growth.”
“The revised budget I signed today would continue to fuel the New Jersey Comeback if it included immediate tax cuts for New Jerseyans. After two hard years of shared sacrifice we’re no longer on the brink of fiscal catastrophe. Because of the tough and difficult choices we’ve made, this year’s budget allows us to make an unprecedented commitment to education, make one of the largest pension payments in our state’s history and fund critical programs that protect our most vulnerable,” said Governor Christie.
Governor Christie put Corzine Democrats on their heels by vetoing $361 million in unnecessary or unsupported spending that threatened to reverse the renewed fiscal health, economic growth and investment of the last two years. In addition to piling on new spending in the budget, Corzine Democrats tried to circumvent the tough choices required to meet a balanced budget by passing additional spending bills outside of the process. As Governor Christie has repeatedly said, spending needs to be accounted for as part of a comprehensive budget plan.
“This spending as usual is just more of the same mentality that plagued the eight years before I became Governor when there was reckless spending and a cycle of raising taxes and fees every 25 days. We cannot go back to the old way of doing things which got us into a fiscal mess in the first place. Corzine Democrats need to realize that they cannot add millions of dollars in spending outside of the budget when every homeowner, student or family faced with financial choices is spending within their budget,” said Governor Christie.
As a result of Governor Christie’s actions, the budget signed into law today maintains a sound, responsible surplus of over $600 million – more than double the Fiscal Year 2013 projected ending fund balance from the Governor’s originally proposed budget and exceeds the levels in the budget as passed by the Legislature. This sound surplus and the fact that the Administration aggressively manages government throughout the year is a signal that the state’s fiscal health is on strong footing.
A “major infrastructure failure” at the Swimming River Water Treatment Plant in the Lincroft section of Middletown has shut the water off for 3,000 Holmdel residences and closed Brookdale Community College until further notice.
Holmdel-Hazlet Patch was the first to report the story, scooping the Asbury Park Press pay site by an hour.
A statement from New Jersey American Water Company that was emailed by the Borough of Tinton Falls to its residents and forwarded to MMM by a reader states that the failure includes the loss of two transmission mains leaving the plant and well as the raw water main coming into the plant. New Jersey American Water customers in Monmouth County may be experiencing low water pressure or no pressure at this time.
Photo credit: lostcreekquarnberg blog
Residents of Middletown, Holmdel, Aberdeen, Highlands, Seabright, Rumson, Fair Haven, Little Silver, Oceanport, Shrewsbury Township and Borough, Tinton Falls and Long Branch are requested to limit all non-essential water use while NJAW works to restore service.
Save water, shower with friends.
UPDATE 4:32
Middletown Township sent out an automated phone call at 4:30 to residents and businesses announcing that all outdoor water usage is restricted.
In today’s deeply disappointing decision on Obamacare, a majority of the Supreme Court actually got the Constitution mostly right. The Commerce Clause — the part of the Constitution that grants Congress the authority to regulate commerce among the states — does not authorize the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance. The Court, in a 5–4 decision, refused to join all the august legal experts who insisted that of course it granted that authorization, that only yahoos and Republican partisans could possibly doubt it. It then pretended that this requirement is constitutional anyway, because it is merely an application of the taxing authority. Rarely has the maxim that the power to tax is the power to destroy been so apt, a portion of liberty being the direct object in this case.
What the Court has done is not so much to declare the mandate constitutional as to declare that it is not a mandate at all, any more than the mortgage-interest deduction in the tax code is a mandate to buy a house. Congress would almost surely have been within its constitutional powers to tax the uninsured more than the insured. Very few people doubt that it could, for example, create a tax credit for the purchase of insurance, which would have precisely that effect. But Obamacare, as written, does more than that. The law repeatedly speaks in terms of a “requirement” to buy insurance, it says that individuals “shall” buy it, and it levies a “penalty” on those who refuse. As the conservative dissent points out, these are the hallmarks of a “regulatory penalty, not a tax.”
The law as written also cuts off all federal Medicaid funds for states that decline to expand the program in the ways the lawmakers sought. A majority of the Court, including two of the liberals, found this cut-off unconstitutionally coercive on the states. The Court’s solution was not to invalidate the law or the Medicaid expansion, but to rule that only the extra federal funds devoted to the expansion could be cut off. As the dissenters rightly point out, this solution rewrites the law — and arbitrarily, since Congress could have avoided the constitutional problem in many other ways.
Governor Chris Christie issued the following statement about the Supreme Court’s decision on ObamaCare:
“I’ve been clear from the very beginning that I do not believe a one-size-fits-all health care program works for the entire country and that each governor should have the ability to make decisions about what works best for their state. Today’s Supreme Court decision is disappointing and I still believe this is the wrong approach for the people of New Jersey who should be able to make their own judgments about health care. Most importantly, the Supreme Court is confirming what we knew all along about this law – it is a tax on middle class Americans.”
Governor Chris Christie took his tax fight to a standing-room-only town hall crowd in Brick Township (Ocean County) yesterday afternoon.
And at that Brick gathering, my dear Save Jerseyans, we caught a welcome glimpse of the no-nonsense style of politics that quickly transformed Chris Christie into a national figure; you’ll likely remember his viral warning to beachgoers in the run-up to Hurricane Irene:
Surely, the contrast between Christie and Corzine in Election ’09 couldn’t have been clearer. I was proud to have been one of his earliest and most vocal grassroots supporters. I still am.
But what is our state party’s winning contrast with the liberal legislature right now in this ongoing budget fight?
A 72 year old Teaneck man was arrested on Monday night after allegedly threatening to shoot his neighbor in the head for farting, according to reports in The Recordand The Star Ledger.
Daniel Collins threaten to shoot his 47 year old neighbor, who’s identity is being withheld because there is no evidence of the flatus, after the neighbor cut the cheese while passing Collins’s apartment door.
Collins denied pointing his finger gun at his neighbor and gave the Teaneck Police permission to search his property. A .32 caliber revolver that matched the description the man gave was found under the front seat of Collins’ car.
Collins was charged with aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and terroristic threats. He was released on his own recognizance.
