Water Shutoffs—New NRDC Map Shows Hot Spots Across New Jersey
Better state policies are needed to help low-income households afford their water bills and maintain access to water.
Update May 2026: The “Key takeaways” below now include findings from New Jersey American Water’s 2025 data. Other utilities have not submitted all of their 2025 reports; the map will be updated when additional utilities’ data are available.
Communities across the country are grappling with rising water and sewer rates, which are increasingly unaffordable for many low-income households. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 12 to 19 million low-income households nationwide (9.2 to 14.6 percent of all U.S. households) face unaffordable water bills.
In New Jersey, an estimated one-fifth of all households—in cities, suburbs, and rural towns alike—face challenges affording their water and sewer bills. As in the rest of the country, rates continue rising in the state, driven largely by the need for water system improvements that are critical to providing safe water.
When people cannot afford to pay their water bill, they often face loss of access to essential water service, spiraling debt and economic hardship, loss of housing, loss of parental custody of children, and grave health risks. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that in 2022, among nearly 1,900 water and wastewater utilities that responded to a voluntary survey, the average utility sent shutoff notices to 16 percent of its residential customers and actually disconnected 5 percent. But comprehensive and consistent water shutoff data still remain limited across the country.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, New Jersey instituted a two-year shutoff moratorium as a public health measure, which ended in March 2022. Later that year, with ongoing concern about the harms of shutoffs, New Jersey enacted the nation’s strongest reporting requirements concerning water shutoffs and other water affordability metrics.
The reporting law requires all water and sewer utilities (as well as electric and gas utilities) to submit monthly, zip code–level data regarding shutoffs, customer arrears, tax liens sold on people’s homes for nonpayment, participation in utility assistance or affordability programs, and more. Reporting began in 2022 but, to establish a pre-pandemic baseline for comparison, the law also required utilities to submit data for 2019.
Four years of New Jersey data are now available, providing a uniquely detailed dataset on water shutoffs and other consequences of unaffordable bills. The four main privately owned water utilities that serve about 35 to 40 percent of the state— Aqua, New Jersey American Water, Middlesex Water Company, and Veolia—have been the most consistent in submitting their reports. Compliance has been much sparser among the state’s hundreds of publicly owned water systems.
Water shutoff dashboard
Tens of thousands of New Jerseyans experience water shutoffs in zip codes across the state, with notable hot spots in certain areas.
Using the 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024 reports from those four large utilities, NRDC has created an interactive dashboard that allows anyone to delve into the water shutoff data at the zip code level. While shutoffs are disproportionately concentrated in a small number of zip codes, those shutoff hot spots appear in all regions of the state.
The dashboard allows users to overlay shutoff data with municipal and legislative district boundaries. It also correlates shutoffs with demographic variables at the zip code level, such as household income and the percentage of people of color. A set of bar graphs provides an overview of the water shutoff data by utility. Users can download a spreadsheet with all of the raw data on shutoffs and demographics.
This dashboard illustrates the impact of unaffordable water bills in communities across the state and the need for low-income water affordability programs. Moreover, because the New Jersey data are uniquely comprehensive, the dashboard demonstrates what other states could learn about the impacts of unaffordable water bills if they follow New Jersey’s example and require such transparency from utilities.
NOTE: This map is best viewed on a desktop/laptop/tablet; on mobile, the map is best viewed in Chrome.
Key takeaways from the dashboard
- More than 57,000 residential shutoffs were reported across 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024 across the four large investor-owned water utilities that serve 35 to 40 percent of the state population. (This number is an undercount, as two of the utilities, Aqua and Veolia, reported either no data or unreliable data for 2019. Veolia also did not file reports for the last three months of 2024.)
- For the four years combined, the zip code with the most shutoffs was in Camden (08105), the state’s poorest city. In that zip code, served by New Jersey American Water, there were 2,627 water shutoffs, which is 45 percent of the number of residential accounts. The population in that zip code is 97 percent people of color, including 68 percent Hispanic/Latine and 26 percent Black.
- Shutoffs were especially concentrated within a small number of zip codes. Out of 346 total zip codes, the top 10 accounted for 27 percent of all shutoffs, and the top 50 accounted for two-thirds.
- Shutoff hot spots include state legislative districts represented by both major political parties. Of the top 10 zip codes for most shutoffs, half are represented in the state legislature by Democrats and half by Republicans.
- In 2025, New Jersey American Water more than doubled their number of shutoffs from the prior year, with over 18,000 shutoffs. Additional takeaways from New Jersey American Water’s 2025 data, including “Top 10” zip codes, are available here. (The map has not yet been updated with 2025 data because the other utilities have not submitted all of their 2025 reports. The map will be updated when additional utilities’ data are available.)
- Shutoff rates varied significantly over time, across utilities, and across zip codes. Per utility, annual shutoffs as a percentage of residential accounts ranged from 0.6 to 4.3 percent. However, shutoffs in some individual zip codes exceeded 20 percent or 30 percent in a single year.
- Shutoffs appear to disproportionately affect lower-income zip codes with higher percentages of residents who are people of color. Specifically, the zip codes with the most shutoffs (top 10 and top 50) had, on average, a lower median income and a higher percentage of Black and Hispanic/Latine populations, as compared to the average of zip codes in the dataset and as compared to the state as a whole.
- New Jersey American Water, which serves nearly two-thirds of all residential households within the dataset, accounts for the majority of shutoffs. However, Aqua, with about one-tenth as many total residential customers, had by far the most shutoffs as a percentage of residential accounts.
- Annual shutoffs decreased significantly from 2019 (pre-pandemic) to 2022–'24 (post-shutoff moratorium) for the two utilities that provided pre-pandemic shutoff data, New Jersey American Water and Middlesex Water Company.
- Between 2023 and 2024, three of the four utilities saw a decrease in total shutoffs. However, New Jersey American Water reported an 18 percent increase. Zip code 08105 in Camden (the no. 1 zip code for most total shutoffs), which is served by American Water, saw a 75 percent increase in shutoffs from 2023 to 2024. Residential customers receiving a shutoff notice in that zip code were 2.6 times as likely to be disconnected as the average New Jersey American Water customer receiving a shutoff notice in 2024.
- Among the top 10 zip codes for total shutoffs, six saw extremely large increases in shutoffs from 2023 to 2024. In addition to 08015 in Camden, these are: 08021 (Clementon, 90 percent increase), 08234 (Egg Harbor Township, 64 percent increase), 07083 (Union, 59 percent increase), 08069 (Penns Grove, 55 percent increase), and 08205 (Absecon, 33 percent increase). Further, in zip code 08201, which is served by two utilities (NJAW and Aqua), NJAW reported a 268 percent increase, while Aqua reported a 12 percent decrease.
New Jersey can adopt a range of policies to help low-income households afford rising water bills
Despite the clear need, neither the federal government nor any state has a permanent program to help low-income households pay their water bills. A temporary federal water assistance program—known as the Low Income Household Water Assistance Program (LIHWAP)—expired in 2023 after helping more than 1.5 million households, including more than 17,000 in New Jersey.
Most individual water utilities around the country also lack low-income assistance programs or discounts. Where they exist, they are typically vastly undersubscribed and provide varying, often inadequate levels of support for participants. Further, local water rates are typically regressive, with the poorest customers paying the greatest share of their income to meet their essential water needs.
New Jersey is no exception. It appears that only one privately or publicly owned water utility in the state, New Jersey American Water (the state’s largest water utility, serving about two million people), offers a bill discount to low-income customers.* Its Universal Affordability Tariff provides customers under 200 percent of the federal poverty level with tiered discounts, ranging from 15 to 60 percent off their monthly bill. But that program is drastically underenrolled. The utility estimates that approximately 88,000 residential customers are eligible for the discount. As of December 2024, only about 3,000 customers are enrolled—about 3 percent of eligible customers.
Against this backdrop, there is much that New Jersey can do to help low-income households maintain access to essential water service, regardless of ability to pay. Here are some of the most impactful things New Jersey can do, which generally apply to other states as well:
This could be modeled after the state’s Universal Service Fund (USF) program for low- and moderate-income electric and gas customers. USF caps participants’ combined electric and gas bills at 4 percent of household income and forgives arrears over time as the customer makes complete payment on future, discounted bills.
Two bills have been introduced in the state legislature to create a permanent, statewide water assistance program. New Jersey’s 2024 Statewide Water Supply Plan also endorsed the idea. (Although no other state currently has such a program, coalitions in at least two other states—California and Michigan—are engaged in multiyear campaigns to create one.)
State law is ambiguous as to whether publicly owned water and wastewater utilities can offer low-income discounts. This almost certainly contributes to the lack of discount programs among those utilities. Therefore, the state can enact legislation, which is currently pending in New Jersey, to provide explicit authorization.
Programs can achieve a high participation rate by automatically enrolling water customers who already participate in low-income energy affordability programs or in other income-qualified social service programs. California’s utility commission has taken this approach since 2011, requiring the state’s investor-owned energy utilities to share data with investor-owned water utilities to facilitate auto-enrollment. As of 2021, these California water utilities estimate a 73 percent participation rate in their low-income discounts.**
In New Jersey, the state’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU), which regulates the state’s investor-owned energy and water utilities, could do the same. The state can also explore other ways to use data-matching for automatic enrollment in both existing and new water programs. Coordinating with NJ American Water’s low-income discount program would be a great place to start. Although the company estimated that 88,000 residential customers are eligible, only 3,000 were enrolled as of December 2024.
NRDC and National Consumer Law Center’s Water Affordability Advocacy Toolkit provides a road map, including consumer protections, equitable rate designs, and more.
The vast majority of the state’s publicly owned water and wastewater utilities—which serve the majority of the population—have not been submitting reports, as required by law. The BPU, which is responsible for collecting the reports, and the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, which has financial oversight of publicly owned systems, must do more to promote compliance. (Even for water utilities that have been submitting their reports, some important data points, such as financial assistance provided to customers, have not always been broken down by zip code, as required.)
The same law that required utilities to report the data used in the water shutoff dashboard also requires BPU to analyze the data and provide an “assessment of whether existing customer assistance programs are presently, and in the future, sufficient” to meet the needs of New Jerseyans. Proactive data analysis can inform the design of effective statewide policies. It can also identify communities with the greatest need for support, as well as potential racial or other inequities in access to affordable water.
Comparisons across utilities, and over time, can help identify how differing utility collection practices, consumer protection rules, economic conditions, or rate increases may affect the prevalence of shutoffs. Ongoing data analysis can show whether new policies are effective or need further improvement. (For example, New Jersey American Water reported an 18 percent increase in shutoffs from the prior year. In zip code 08105 in Camden, the company reported a 75 percent increase. In zip code 08021 (in Clementon, Lindenwold, and adjacent towns), the company reported a 268 percent increase.)
Utility submissions under the reporting law are posted in raw form on BPU’s website, in a formal docket. Anyone seeking to understand, or even locate, particular data would need to pore through hundreds of Excel files, with each file containing many hundreds of columns and rows of data.
BPU should create and regularly update an official dashboard to present all of the reported data—not limited to shutoff data—in a user-friendly format. The dashboard should cover all utilities required to report under the law, including water and energy utilities. As a model, BPU should examine a dashboard created by the Illinois utility regulatory commission, which presents data from similar reports filed by some Illinois utilities.
*A few New Jersey water utilities offer discounts for low-income seniors or individuals with disabilities but do not offer a discount for low-income customers generally.
**Kyra Gmoser-Daskalakis and Gregory Pierce, “Analysis of Class A Water Investor Owned Utility Customer Assistance Programs Enrollment (2010–2022),” April 2025, report commissioned by the California Water Association
This page was originally published April 10, 2025, and has since been updated with new information, data, and links.
Related Resources
Water Affordability Advocacy Toolkit
Water Affordability: 2024 Year in Review
