Trenton Water Works announced Wednesday that it is resuming a connection to Aqua New Jersey. A press release from TWW said the utility “will resume supplying millions of gallons of finished drinking water daily to Aqua New Jersey, another regulated public utility that provides drinking water and w astewater services to hundreds of thousands of residents across numerous New Jersey municipalities in multiple counties.” “The TWW system is well-engineered with six interconnections with other water systems and is more than capable of helping Aqua New Jersey meet their customers’ water demands,” Sean Semple, Director of the city’s Department of Water and Sewer, said in the press release. “We regularly supply water to Aqua.” “The water filtration plant is operating normally, and our licensed operators continue to monitor Pennington Avenue Reservoir levels, system demand, performance, and we are grateful for Mother Nature’s cooperation,” Semple said. The city’s water utility had been supplying water to Aqua NJ, but that ended in mid-December when the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection called for the city to shut down the connection. Marc Leckington, author of the From the Mains of Trenton Substack, has been consistently covering the issues at TWW. He reported that the connection had been shut down by the DEP’s demand. He learned this through an open records request that obtained emails between the city and DEP officials. “According to the emails,” Leckington said to The Trentonian, “DEP required the Aqua interconnection to be shut down three days after the frazil ice event because the reservoir had fallen to about one day of remaining supply. Any discussion of restoring that interconnection that ignores how perilously close the system came to failure is incomplete and concerning.” The emails he obtained show that the Pennington Avenue Reservoir had dropped to a level that the state agency described as “one day of storage” and asked for TWW to stop sending water out to Aqua NJ and start bringing water in from NJ American Water. The TWW response to DEP said they were shutting down the export of water to Aqua, but were not opening the connection the NJAW. An email obtained by opens record request from The Mains of Trenton on Substack and shared with The Trentonian. An email from Mayor Reed Gusciora to the DEP subsequently showed that TWW was opening the NJAW connection and attempted to explain why the reservoir level had dropped so significantly. The explanation included “increased system demand,” “ongoing distribution system repairs,” and adjustments to intake “during frazil ice conditions.” An email obtained by opens record request from The Mains of Trenton on Substack and shared with The Trentonian. “TWW’s raw water source is the Delaware River, and its water filtration plant on Route 29 South in Trenton produces approximately 33 million gallons of drinking water daily,” the city’s press release said, “for a five-municipality service area, including Trenton, Hamilton Township, Ewing Township, Lawrence Township, and Hopewell Township. The plant can supply 60 million gallons of drinking water daily.” City of Trenton’s press release from Jan. 7 about reconnecting supply to Aqua NJ. ...read more read less