Newark Watershed Science & Leadership Academy: A Program to Educate Newark’s Youth on Water Treatment and Infrastructure

January 2023 — Pequannock Water Treatment Plant Superintendent Kevin Greer guides students from the John F. Kennedy School around the water plant and its watershed.

A group of teenagers from John F. Kennedy School stood in awe of the massive concrete dam holding back 2.9 billion gallons of water at the Charlotteburg Reservoir, one of seven in the Newark Water & Sewer Utility’s 35,000 acre watershed in Morris and Passaic Counties.

What they heard next was equally impressive.

“You own this,” said Kevin Greer, the superintendent of the City’s Pequannock Water Treatment plant. “Our water system is owned by the people of Newark, who pay for it with their tax dollars and water bills. So, I work for you.”

These students were on a field trip to the revitalized Newark Watershed Science & Leadership Academy, which was started in 2019 by Tiffany Stewart, then Assistant Director of the Newark Water & Sewer Utility and now the City’s Director of Personnel.

Kareem Adeem, the City’s Water & Sewer Utility Director gave her the green light.

“It was a great idea,” Director Adeem said. “Our watershed and treatment plant is a great education tool and can teach these kids many things about nature and the environment, civil engineering, and the science and chemistry we use to deliver the highest quality drinking water possible.”

The COVID-19 pandemic shut the program down, but it was started again in November of last year and is being administered by Fraser’s Mathematics Solutions, which has organized more than a dozen field trips to date.

“We began putting the program together again in August, with Fraser Mathematics and the Board of Education,” said Superintendent Greer. “It really is about education. We can bring these kids up here and give them a hands-on experience that just might trigger the young engineer or young chemist or young environmentalist in them. If they’re interested in working with animals, we have all kinds of animals in the forests we own. The lesson is that all these things are in their reach, working for the City they live in.”

Jaliyla Fraser, the CEO and founder of Fraser Mathematics, agreed.

“The program is geared for students interested in math and sciences and give them exposure to potential jobs in those fields,” she said. “But now we’re taking other schools, too, so everyone can get that exposure.”

Both Superintendent Greer and CEO Fraser said it was also important to emphasize the watershed and treatment plant are public entities, essentially owned by the people of the City of Newark.

“We have one of the best water systems in the country,” Superintendent Greer said. “Our lead line replacement program made national headlines and we are in the process of a $23 million upgrade which includes 74 new valves to pump water in and out of the facility.”

The upgrade includes a backwash system that flushes out contaminants and a modern system to measure the water’s pH and other chemical parameters. The upgrades will increase the plant’s processing capacity from 35 million gallons per day to 60 million gallons per day, which would potentially allow it to sell more water to other towns in the state.

“When the kids in our Academy come here, they are seeing a state-of-the-art facility, run by top professionals,” Greer said. “We are recognized nationally for that, and it is something they can be proud of as Newark residents.”