Date Published: 09/02/2008 [Source]
More than one in 10 private drinking-water wells in New Jersey are contaminated, new data indicate, and residents may never know it.
A report prepared by the state Department of Environmental Protection, based on tests of 51,000 private wells between 2002 and 2007, found that 12.5 percent failed to meet drinking-water standards for one or more contaminants, such as nitrates from fertilizer and fecal coliform. In South Jersey, 10.8 percent of wells tested in South Jersey were contaminated with gross alpha particle activity, probably from the decay of radium.