Our History
The water company was founded by the original developer of the Forest Lakes Community in 1958 and the water system itself installed from 1958 – 1969. Originally intended to provide water for approximately 150 homes, the system was constructed with four inch mains and a storage facility for 100,000 gallons which was completed in 1969. By 1975, there were approximately 350 homes on the system. During the summers of 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977 the community experienced a series of routine weekend water outages caused by high demand, poor maintenance and poor management of the system.
Beginning in 1974, the community requested both the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the board of Public Utilities (BPU) to review the system and its management in an effort to remove control of same from the developer. Due to the excessive development, the DEP and BPU requested that the developer install a second or back-up well which was completed in l974. However, the second well never worked properly and outages continued. Thereafter the DEP and BPU obtained a Court Order banning additional hookups to the system.
In May, 1982, and pursuant to a Court Order, the water company was turned over to the community and became a consumer owned and operated utility with a board of Trustees duly elected by and from the consumers. A new well was installed in 1986 to replace the faulty second well built on 1974, and the storage tank was refurbished to add an additional 60,000 gallons of storage capacity in 1988.
Today, the system is comprised of two wells, a booster station, and ten miles of underground mains and a storage facility of 160,000 gallons. The water company is currently serving 412 consumers.