State agency's drought indicators wrongfully indicated no water issues in northeastern New Jersey, when it was clear there was a growing problem.
Everyone except the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection seemed to know that mounting precipitation deficits were becoming a problem for New Jersey's most populous region.
By several measures of the National Weather Service and the New Jersey State Climatologist, precipitation deficits in northeastern New Jersey, prior to Thursday's rains, were operating between four and six inches below normal. The U.S. Drought Monitor, a national collective of academics, placed northeastern New Jersey in a "moderate drought" designation. United Water, which provides water to more than 800,000, called for voluntarily water restrictions after its reservoirs fell to about 45 percent of capacity, following a scorching and dry August.
But visit the DEP's drought monitoring site, and a different story is being told:
The DEP's measures incorrectly state that there are few water issues facing northeastern New Jersey. For an undetermined amount of time, an analytical error has led the state agency to use and publish erroneous information about the state's water situation, a topic that affects virtually every facet of life in New Jersey, from farming to day-to-day residential water usage.
After initially rejecting an NJ Advance Media inquiry about the seemingly faulty information, the DEP acknowledged that a recent conversion from one National Weather Service product to another had led to an inaccurate processing of information.
"The problem with the precipitation indicators on the web site is being fixed," said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the agency. "We did not realize that there was a problem when we shifted from the (Mid-Atlantic River Forecast Center) data collection system to the more precise Advanced Hydrologic Prediction System."
Hajna said accurate information would begin appearing Monday, when the site is next scheduled to be updated.
The DEP's reservoir level data also conflicts with the company, United Water, that manages it in much of northeastern New Jersey. While United Water said their reservoirs had fallen below 50 percent capacity last week, on the same day, the DEP published figures that state United's reservoirs were well about 60 percent.
Steve Goudsmith, director of communications for the company, said the DEP likely includes a water source, Lake Deforest in New York, which the company has some but not considerable access to as a primary water source.
"We have a limited allocation that comes out of Lake Deforest, so we do not use it when measuring our reservoir capacity," Goudsmith said. "Drought can begin at any moment but you don't know you're in one until you have been for some time. One rainstorm isn't going to fix this. We're not out of the woods yet."
New Jersey is not on the precipice of a water emergency yet, and Thursday's rains certainly will help a region that has barely seen a drop of water in three weeks. But the flubbed data raises questions about how the state agency tasked with overseeing the state's water supply operates, seemingly ignoring a chorus of information that runs counter to their own analysis.
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"It doesn't matter how you look at it, that part of New Jersey has been dry," said David Robinson, the state climatologist at Rutgers University when initially confronted with the anomaly Wednesday. "I'm sort of left scratching my head. They have their own criteria, but I'm not sure what they're using to come up with their figures ... We're talking about an area that's seen, over the last two months, 30 to 40 percent of their normal rainfall. That's the story."
Even after Thursday's rains, parts of New Jersey still have 90-day precipitation deficits of two to five inches. It's unclear if use of the correct information would have changed decision making at the DEP. In 2010, the agency issued a drought watch in northeastern New Jersey when reservoir levels were markedly higher, though the watch was issued in August, a month earlier in peak water usage season.
Hajna said the DEP will continue to monitor the drier than average conditions and said it has become increasingly concerned with the situation in northeastern New Jersey. About one to two inches of rain fell across much of the state Tuesday, according to data from the National Weather Service.
"It was a substantial rain. We're still dry, but it helps," Robinson said.
Already, farmers around the state are reporting that a very dry August is having a significant impact on fall crops, like pumpkins and corn.
But the DEP, Goudsmith and Robinson all said the concern isn't so much for the coming fall and winter, but the spring and summer that follow.
"You don't want to be in a hole heading into the growing season," Robinson said. "This is typically the time of year that the reservoirs replenish themselves. If you don't go into the spring and summer with a nice cushion, you can find yourself in trouble very quick."
Stephen Stirling may be reached at sstirling@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @sstirling. Find him on Facebook.
