New Jersey passed a law making your town plow your private roads, light them and collect your trash. It said nothing about what is underneath them. That silence is the single most expensive fact an HOA board in this state can fail to understand, because the water mains, sewer mains, storm system, hydrants and valves under a private community almost always belong to the association.
Boards usually discover this in the worst possible way: a main fails, or an inspection report lands, and everybody spends two weeks finding out who has to pay.
What the town does owe you
The Municipal Services Act, N.J.S.A. 40:67-23.2 through 23.8, has been in force since 1993 and requires every municipality to provide qualified private communities with certain services on their roads and streets, or reimburse the community for them. The point of it was to stop residents paying twice, once through property taxes and again through association fees.
Three services, and the wording matters:
| Service | What the statute actually says |
|---|---|
| Snow and ice | “Removal of snow, ice and other obstructions from the roads and streets” |
| Lighting | “Lighting of the roads and streets, to the extent of payment for the electricity required, but not including the installation or maintenance” |
| Waste | “Collection of leaves and recyclable materials along the roads and streets and the collection or disposal of solid waste” |
Note the lighting line. The town pays for the electricity. The poles, the wiring and the fixtures stay yours.
There is a limitation worth knowing, because associations talk themselves out of the benefit on the strength of it. A municipality is not required to run its vehicles on a road that is not accepted for dedication to public use, or that does not meet municipal standards and specifications for dedication, “except for width.” Narrow is not a disqualifier. If your roads are simply narrower than the town builds them, that alone does not put you outside the Act.
What the Act says nothing about
Read those three items again. Snow. Lighting. Trash.
Every one of them is on the surface. The Legislature addressed what happens on top of your roads and left everything underneath exactly where it was, which is with the association. No water main, no sewer main, no storm drain, no catch basin, no hydrant, no valve appears anywhere in it.
So in a typical New Jersey private community the association owns and pays for:
- The water mains running through the community, unless they were dedicated to the water purveyor
- The sewer mains and laterals up to whatever tie-in point the governing documents describe
- The storm system: inlets, catch basins, piping, outfalls, detention or retention basins
- Fire hydrants, valves and post indicator valves on the property, including their annual inspection and testing under NFPA 25
- Culverts under the private roads
That last one on hydrants surprises boards more than anything else. A hydrant on a public street belongs to the utility or the town. A hydrant inside a private community belongs to the community, and so does the bill when it fails an inspection. A recent job replacing two old Kennedy hydrants on one private property was priced at $28,500 for the pair, and the hydrants themselves were a small part of that.
The two questions that settle it for your community
1. Were the utilities dedicated? When the development was built, the mains were either dedicated to the municipality or the water and sewer authority and accepted by them, or they were not. If they were, they are the utility's problem. If they were not, they are yours. Developments from the 1960s through the 1980s very often were not, and nobody currently on the board was there.
2. What do the governing documents say? The master deed, declaration and bylaws allocate responsibility between the association and the individual unit owner, and they are not consistent from one community to the next. Some make the association responsible for all main utility lines. Some push the lateral to the unit owner from the point it leaves the main. Read yours before a failure rather than during one.
Those two answers together tell you what you own. Neither of them is something to assume, and both are knowable on a quiet afternoon.
What it looks like when it goes wrong
We were called into an HOA in Bernardsville by a plumber who had found the problem and could not fix it: roots had wrecked about ten feet of sewer line at four and a half feet down. Root damage is usually local, which is the good news, and that job was a spot repair rather than a replacement. The write-up, including why we stayed on site while the plumber worked, is in ten feet of line, wrecked by roots.
The pattern is worth noticing. It was found by somebody who happened to be there for a different reason. Nobody had been looking. On community infrastructure that is the norm, and it is why the failures land as emergencies with no line in the budget.
What a board can usefully do about it
Not a maintenance plan, which every consultant recommends and few boards fund. Three concrete things.
Establish what you own, once, and write it down. Dedicated or not, and what the master deed says. That document outlives every board.
Find out the condition before it tells you. A sewer main can be camera inspected. A water main's condition shows in its break history. Hydrants are already being inspected annually under NFPA 25 if somebody is doing it, and if nobody is, that is its own finding.
Read the inspection report you already have. If a fire inspection has come back with deficiencies, some of those items are landscaping and some are excavation, and they arrive on the same page looking equally serious. Which is which is on what a failed fire inspection actually means.
Common questions
Does the town have to plow our private roads in New Jersey? Either plow them or reimburse you for it, if you are a qualified private community. The Municipal Services Act requires municipalities to provide, or pay for, snow and ice removal, the electricity for street lighting, and collection of leaves, recyclables and solid waste along your roads. It has been law since 1993 and a surprising number of associations have never claimed it.
Our roads are narrower than the town's. Does that disqualify us? Not on its own. The statute excuses a municipality where a road is not accepted for dedication or does not meet municipal standards for dedication, “except for width.” Width is specifically carved out, so being narrow is not the disqualifier boards often assume it is.
Who owns the water main inside our community? The association, unless it was dedicated to and accepted by the water purveyor when the development was built. There is no general rule that makes it the utility's simply because it carries public water. Check whether dedication happened; on older developments it frequently did not.
Who is responsible for a fire hydrant in an HOA? The association. A hydrant on the public system belongs to the utility or the municipality, but one inside a private community belongs to the community, including its annual inspection and flow testing under NFPA 25 and any repair or replacement. This is the single most common expensive surprise for boards.
Does the Municipal Services Act cover our sewer or water mains? No. It covers three surface services: snow and ice, street lighting electricity, and waste collection. Nothing underground appears in it at all. Your mains, storm system, hydrants and valves remain the association's regardless of what the town does on the surface.
How do we find out what we actually own? Two documents. Whether the utilities were dedicated and accepted at the time of construction, which the municipality or the authority can confirm, and your own master deed and bylaws, which allocate responsibility between the association and individual owners. Both are worth establishing before something fails, because during a failure everybody has an opinion and nobody has the paperwork.
Still not sure how this applies to your property? That is what a free on-site estimate is for. Call 862-268-2510 or tell us what is going on, and we will give you a straight answer, including when the answer is that you do not need us.
Code and source references
- N.J.S.A. 40:67-23.3, Municipal Services Act, services a municipality must provide or reimburse for qualified private communities
- NFPA 25, Standard for the Inspection, Testing and Maintenance of Water-Based Fire Protection Systems
- NFPA 24, Standard for the Installation of Private Fire Service Mains and Their Appurtenances
- What a hydrant must comply with in New Jersey: acceptable fire hydrants in NJ
- Our current price ranges: what this work costs
General information from an excavation contractor, not your association attorney. What your particular community owns is decided by its governing documents and by what was dedicated when it was built, and those are worth reading properly.