The Oradell Dam, linchpin of North Jersey's drinking water supply, just turned 100
North Jersey officials marked the Oradell Reservoir Dam's 100 years of providing drinking water to Bergen and Hudson counties on Wednesday.
“The dam and the reservoir that it creates provides a really reliable drinking water source," said Alan Weland, the vice president and general manager of Veolia New Jersey, the for-profit utility that operates the reservoir and provides drinking water to nearly 1 million customers in North Jersey. Without it, he said, North Jersey "as it exists today couldn’t be the way it is.”
Bergen County Executive James Tedesco called the dam an “essential component of New Jersey’s water infrastructure.”
'Amazing engineering feat'
At the turn of the 20th century, entrepreneurs began developing a system to provide safe drinking water to a growing population in North Jersey. The Hackensack Water Company, now known as Veolia, already served about 100,000 people. But the area soon needed a larger reservoir to supply high-quality water for a post-war boom.
Work began on a 250 million-gallon reservoir in 1901. Between 1911 and 1923, laborers took on an “amazing engineering feat” to replace a wooden dam with a 23-foot-tall concrete structure that “has stood the test of time” for a century in Oradell, Weland said. “The structure was built to withstand all conditions while meeting an ever-increasing demand.”
By the time it was completed in 1923, the concrete dam was 402 feet long and 23 feet high and could hold 3.5 billion gallons of water.
Today, an average of 98 million gallons a day are drawn from the Oradell. The highest single-day draw was 163 million gallons on July 22, 2011. “The growth and development of this water company over 150 years made possible the growth and development of Bergen County," said Mary Amoroso, a Bergen County commissioner. "Without this water, we would not be thriving and growing as we have been.”
The existing reservoir can hold 3.5 billion gallons of water.
More: A third of N.J.'s most critical dams need repairs
Biodiversity projects to protect the watershed
Beyond providing water, the reservoir is home to 12 types of fish and is visited by other wildlife. Veolia has implemented biodiversity projects as one method to preserve the watershed. People can also enjoy recreation on the Hackensack River, which the dam contains, with the installation two years ago of a kayak launch.
“We've now given access to a body of water that no one ever had access to," Tedesco said. "And now people get to see the beauty of this section of the river that no one was able to.”
Veolia’s team works daily to maintain the dam and reservoir, and officials praised the century-long efforts of people who kept the system alive and well. Tedesco recalled their ongoing efforts and “significant progress” to bring “truly clean” drinking water to people when the county announced that lead was present in the water.
Flooding vs. protecting water supply
Many residents in towns surrounding the Hackensack River, including Oradell, where the dam is, were affected by flooding last year. At the time, Tedesco urged Veolia — then called Suez Water — to mitigate flooding after the watershed surged twice within seven months. Water levels in the river reached 6 feet after Hurricane Ida’s aftermath caused flooding across the region.
Rich Henning, then the executive vice president of communications for Suez, said there's a misconception that the company's reservoirs function like a flood-control dam. Rather, they're constructed as water supply dams that the utility wants as full as possible so that "we have the water when we need it the most."
More: Bergen blames Suez for flood damage, saying utility should warn of brimming reservoirs
Unintended consequences for Meadowlands
The dam's construction had unintended consequences down the river. The Hackensack River is tidal, flowing into Newark Bay and ultimately the Atlantic. Since the Oradell Dam was built, it has held back some of the Hackensack's freshwater flow downstream, which has allowed saltwater from New York Harbor and Newark Bay to reach farther up into the Meadowlands.
As a result, the Meadowlands was transformed from a freshwater marsh into a tidal saltwater one, destroying large stands of Atlantic cedar trees.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Oradell Reservoir Dam marks 100 years serving North Jersey
