Winter 2023

NJUA Advocates for Amendments to Service Outage Notification Bill

NJUA lobbied on behalf of the utilities for amendments to a notice of utility outages bill. NJUA outlined concerns with the practical implementation and administration of the bill’s suggested plan to disseminate service outage information to customers and reiterated the importance of ensuring that utility customers have the option to opt-in to receiving outage information in the customer’s preferred method of communication. NJUA is working with the sponsor to address our concerns through amendments.

NJUA Comments on NJBPU’s Future of Gas Proceeding

NJUA attended the BPU’s two-day technical conference in August and submitted comments on behalf of the GDCs for the Board’s Sept 6th Future of Gas comment period deadline. The takeaway from these comments is that we should be pursuing an “all of the above” approach that allows for innovation and collaboration across industries as technologies exist today that enable multiple options for a shared vision of emissions reduction.

NJUA Advocates for Remote Net Metering Bill Amendments

Throughout the summer and fall, NJUA worked with state officials to continue its dialogue and lobby for amendments to remote net metering legislation impacting the electric utilities. The Governor conditionally vetoed (CV) the bill reflecting NJUA’s proposed language which 1) adds language to ensure and clarify cost recovery for electric public utilities; 2) add language that requires the solar energy project to be metered separately; and 3) remove language that would permit public entities from collectively being certified as a host customer. In late November, the Governor’s CV was received in the senate and the senate adopted the Governor’s recommendations on December 11th.

NJUA Advocates for Amendments to Bill Concerning Notification of Tier 1 Violations

NJUA advocated for amendments to a bill concerning the notification process by which public water systems provide boil water notices and violations of drinking water quality standards. NJUA’s recommended language would expand upon current law already requiring public water systems to provide notice to the mayor and municipal clerk, or their authorized designees, of each affected municipality that receives water from the public water system when a boil water notice is in effect and upon the recession of the boil water notice. NJUA lobbied for amendments to allow utilities to continue to follow DEP regulations regarding notifications for Tier 1 violations and expands this to additional governmental entities in order to address the sponsor’s concerns. The sponsor agreed to hold the bill from an Assembly floor vote until the amendments we requested are worked out. NJUA looks forward to continuing our advocacy on behalf of our water members.