Battle to block pollution continues Central New Jersey has plenty to drink, but development and pollution spark concerns. He spent his summers in Ringwood in North Jersey, near the Wanaque Reservoir. I saw the impact development had on the streams. A development would go up, and the streams wouldn't be the same. Back to series Today, as executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, Tittel is a soldier in the battle for clean water.
New Jersey is a small state, the most densely populated state.
Though some of our water does come from the headwaters of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania and New York, it still travels through a state chock full of people, industries, sewage plants, cars, trains, trucks and buses before it reaches our homes. The plants meet federal standards that require them to test for 84 pollutants. But that's a fraction of the known chemicals on earth. A recent poll suggests residents have little confidence in drinking what comes out of their tap. Only 26 percent use only tap water, about half a national average of 46 percent reported by a 1998 Gallup Poll.