2025 Environmental Communications Awards Competition Winner
Honor Award
New Jersey American Water's Lead Service Line Replacement Communications Campaign
Entrant: New Jersey American Water and CDM Smith
Person in Charge: Veronica Horvath, Environmental Scientist, CDM Smith
Co-Author: Chelsea Kulp, Acting Director of Communications and External Affairs, New Jersey American Water
INTRODUCTION
New Jersey American Water’s Lead Service Line Replacement Communications Campaign
Author
Veronica Horvath, Environmental Scientist
CDM Smith
4600 Park Road, Suite 240
Charlotte, NC 28209
Phone: (401) 457-0314
Email: [email protected]
www.cdmsmith.com
Co-Author
Chelsea Kulp, Acting Director of Communications and External Affairs
New Jersey American Water
1 Water Street, Camden NJ 08102
Phone: (856) 745-1861
Email: [email protected]
www.newjerseyamwater.com
For any questions about the entry, please contact Veronica Horvath
THE CHALLENGE 
In July 2021, New Jersey passed legislation that mandates the identification and removal of all lead and galvanized steel water service lines (LSLs) by 2031. This legislation, which is in alignment with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR), adopted a more aggressive approach and established a deadline for the replacements by 2031.
A major hurdle facing US water service providers is that the rule requires replacing both the company-owned and customer-owned portions of the water service line. However, water utilities do not maintain the customer-owned portion and were never required to keep records on their material type. New Jersey American Water (NJAW), the state’s largest water services provider, oversees 700,000 service lines across 32 public water systems and in over 190 municipalities. At the start of the Lead Service Line Replacement Program (LSLRP), about 600,000 lines had unknown materials.
To meet the 2031 deadline, NJAW needed to quickly and efficiently build an inventory of customer service line materials. To achieve this, NJAW collaborated with CDM Smith.
THE STRATEGY 
Faced with a formidable challenge, the collaborative team devised a strategy that relied on two main components:
Door-to-Door Canvassing:
The project adopted a prioritization model that considers several environmental justice factors and decided which areas to prioritize for replacement. Based on these prioritizations, teams were deployed on the ground to conduct water service line inspections while educating customers on the replacement program and signing up those who were eligible.
Customer Self-Identification:
In an innovative and cost-effective approach to obtaining information on customer service line materials, the project team created a pioneering system of customer self-identification. In this system, the customer is educated on how to locate the service line, conduct a scratch and magnet test to determine material type, take a picture of the result, and upload it along with survey information via an online portal.
Informed by this strategy, NJAW created a comprehensive communications campaign to reach, educate, inspire action, and build trust with customers.
TARGET AUDIENCE 
The campaign targeted homeowners and renters in 190 communities across New Jersey. Because these communities are diverse, the campaign messaging relied on a common ground approach to appeal to a wide audience with clear and simple language. The campaign also provided translated content in areas where more than 10% of the population spoke a different language.
Additionally, the target audience encompassed a wide group of stakeholders across cities, local government agencies, and municipalities that the campaign creatively leveraged. NJAW proactively developed the LSL Stakeholder Toolkit — a comprehensive collection of resources to help them engage effectively with their residents. The kit includes talking points, social graphics, scripts for email, letter, video and website pages, as well as printables. It can be easily downloaded from NJAW’s website.
COMMUNICATION PLAN
The project team designed a multipronged communications campaign and deployed a seven-touchpoint strategy to reinforce messaging in different channels and appeal to different learning modalities. The campaign used direct mail, email, out-of-home advertising, digital ads, videos, websites, and sponsored content.
The goals of the communications campaign were: 
GOAL 1: RAISE AWARENESS
To reach customers in a crowded messaging space, the campaign adopted an innovative approach to messaging: 
GOAL 2: FACILITATE SELF-REPORTING OF SERVICE LINE MATERIALS
The campaign aimed to educate every day, non-technical people about the issue of lead in water and empower them with the tools to conduct accurate self-identification and report their results. The campaign created a landing page on the NJAW website, offered interactive maps, instructional videos on simple tests, and a mechanism for reporting the outcomes. This approach provides a cost-effective alternative, allowing for material identifications at the lowest possible cost, minimizing program expenses compared to other methods like vacuum excavation. 
GOAL 3: ENCOURAGE CUSTOMERS TO SIGN-UP FOR AN INSPECTION IN THEIR AREA
To maximize outcomes, the campaign proceeded with inspections and self-identification efforts in tandem. NJAW held targeted meetings with local public officials ahead of canvassing efforts for each community. 
OVERVIEW:
Metrics and highlights to date: 
RESULTS
The communications campaign launched in April 2023 and is still ongoing. It has been successful in achieving its goals. As of February 2025, the campaign resulted in 45,000 successful inspections and 24,300 successful self-identifications. The campaign also achieved cost savings, with self-identifications costing significantly less than traditional inspections.
The most notable metrics are the marked increase in self-reporting results and successful in-home inspections in correlation with the number of communication touchpoints. Data collected during the campaign showed that customer self-identification more than doubled when a full communications approach was deployed. Self-identification jumped to 5.6% with a full communications approach, compared to just 1.1% with no communications and no canvassing.
Pioneering in its deployment of a full-scale communications campaign by a water utility agency, the NJAW example demonstrates the power of communication to elicit action on complex issues, inspire community collaboration on public health outcomes, and achieve tremendous cost savings. The lessons learned serve as a blueprint for innovative public engagement for engineering and construction projects that impact communities.
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