Montague Township's water and sewer systems changed hands on June 1, 2026. New Jersey American Water completed its purchase of the Montague Sewer & Water Company, and if you are on that system the company that owns the pipe in your street is now the largest water utility in the state. Here is what the record actually says, and what changes at your house.
What was sold
The detail is in the joint petition the companies filed with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on May 30, 2025, BPU Docket No. WM25050320. That filing describes the whole system in one paragraph, and it is smaller than most people assume.
- About 776 water customers and 268 sewer customers, all of them inside Montague Township.
- Five treatment plants, five groundwater wells, four pressure tanks and two storage tanks.
- 11.75 miles of main and collection pipe, between the water and sewer sides combined.
Under twelve miles of pipe does not cover a township this size, and that is the first practical point. Most of Montague is on a private well and a septic system, and this sale does not touch those properties at all. If no water or sewer bill comes to your house, nothing about this transaction changes anything on your property.
When the deal closed a year later, New Jersey American Water put the figure at roughly 810 water and 270 wastewater connections. That is not a contradiction. The two counts are twelve months apart and they count slightly different things, customers in the one and connections in the other, so neither should be read as today's exact number.
Who bought it, and who sold it
The seller was Nexus Regulated Utilities, LLC, a subsidiary of Nexus Water Group. Montague was one piece of a much larger transaction: American Water bought Nexus systems across eight states in a deal it valued at $315 million. Montague is a small part of that, which is worth knowing, because the reason your system sold probably had little to do with Montague.
Regulatory approvals were in hand as of May 21, 2026 and the purchase closed on June 1. Two senior treatment operators from the old company stayed on with New Jersey American Water, so the people who know where the valves are did not leave with the sale.
What happens to the rates
This is the part worth reading carefully, because the answer is better than most people expect and it has an expiry date.
In the petition the companies told the Board that rates charged to Montague customers would not change until New Jersey American Water's next rate case, with the exception of minor ancillary charges for things like bad checks and service restoration. They further stated that Montague customers would not be subject to a list of the company's surcharges, the Purchased Water and Purchased Wastewater Adjustment Clauses, the Distribution System Improvement Charge, the Wastewater System Improvement Charge, the Special Program Charge and the Resiliency and Environmental System Investment Charge, until after the next base rate proceeding that includes Montague customers.
There is one carve-out, and it is the one that matters most on this site. Montague customers would become subject to the company's Lead Service Line Replacement Charge, following a semi-annual filing after the merger completed. More on that below.
For reference, the rates New Jersey American Water currently publishes for Montague customers are a $20.00 monthly fixed charge on a 5/8 inch meter plus $2.334 per 100 gallons for water, and a $110.06 monthly charge plus $2.000 per 100 gallons for wastewater. Check your own bill rather than this page before you budget from those numbers, because rate schedules move and this one is expected to.
The housekeeping nobody tells you about
Two small things catch people after a utility sale, and both did here.
Auto Pay did not transfer. Banking information does not move between companies in a transaction like this, so anybody enrolled in automatic payment with the old company had to enrol again with the new one. A payment that quietly stops happening is the kind of thing people discover through a past due notice.
The first bill was prorated. Customers were told to expect their first New Jersey American Water bill in June or July, covering a partial period. A bill that does not match the last one is not necessarily a rate increase.
The lead service line question
New Jersey American Water is asking Montague customers to report what material their service line is made of, and the Lead Service Line Replacement Charge is the surcharge Montague customers were specifically not exempted from. Those two facts are connected, and they are the practical consequence of this sale for a homeowner.
Every New Jersey water system owes the state an inventory of the service line material at every address it serves. When a system changes hands, that obligation moves with it, and the new owner inherits whatever pile of unidentified lines the old one left behind. We have counted the rows in the inventories our local water systems have published, and the honest local finding is that lead is rare around here and the unidentified pile is large. Montague is not among the towns in that count, because the system did not publish an inventory file we could read.
If you get a letter asking about your line, the answer is usually a five minute job: find where the pipe enters the basement, scratch it with a coin, and hold a magnet to it. Copper scratches to a bright penny color and is not magnetic. Galvanized steel is magnetic. Lead is soft, scratches to a dull silver, and is not magnetic. That is the whole test, and reporting it accurately is what keeps you out of the unidentified column.
What still belongs to you
A sale changes who owns the main. It does not change where the utility's responsibility stops and yours starts, and that line is the one that costs money.
The utility owns the main in the street and, depending on the system, the service line up to the curb stop or the meter. From that point to the house it is the property owner's pipe. If it leaks under the front lawn, a new owner with a bigger balance sheet does not make it their problem. The same is true on the sewer side: the lateral from the house to the main is yours, including the part under the road in most arrangements.
That is worth knowing before you need it, because the two questions people ask us in an emergency are who owns this and who do I call, and the answers changed here in June. The number for the new owner runs 24 hours, which the old one did not.
Sources
- New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Docket No. WM25050320, order designating commissioner and setting bar date, agenda date September 25, 2025. The system inventory and the rate commitments quoted above are from this filing.
- American Water, news release, June 1, 2026, announcing completion of the purchase.
- New Jersey American Water's information page for Montague Sewer & Water Company customers, for the billing transition and the published rates.
We work in Montague and across Sussex County on water services, sewer laterals, septic systems and the digging that goes with them. If you are trying to work out whether a problem is on your side of the line or the utility's, that is a phone call, not an estimate.