- Serving Central New Jersey For More Than 90 Years
The Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority shall be the best, most efficiently run sewerage authority, in full compliance with all regulations, in the State of New Jersey.
The Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority (RVSA) is an autonomous agency that owns and operates a trunk sewer system and a wastewater treatment facility in Rahway, New Jersey. The RVSA currently serves more than 250,000 residents and 3,500 industrial and commercial customers in 14 communities in central New Jersey.
The Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority (RVSA) is an autonomous agency that owns and operates a trunk sewer system and a wastewater treatment facility in Rahway, New Jersey. The RVSA currently serves more than 250,000 residents and 3,500 industrial and commercial customers in Central New Jersey.
The RVSA is governed by a Board of Commissioners, which includes one representative from each member municipality. The day-to-day operations of the RVSA are handled by a full time Executive Director and a staff of more than 50 employees.
Back in 1928, nine communities in Union and Middlesex counties — Springfield, Kenilworth, Roselle Park, Cranford, Westfield, Garwood, Clark, Rahway, and Woodbridge joined forces to handle sewage in a cost effective regional system as the Rahway Valley Joint Meeting. The towns constructed a treatment plant and a trunk sewer system to collect and treat wastewater.
After 23 years, in 1951, the member municipalities entered into a new agreement, thus creating the current Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority. The 1951 service agreement (revised in 1995) details the rights of the municipalities to use the system and allocates the cost of operating, maintaining, repairing and improving the facilities to each of the member municipalities.
Scotch Plains joined the RVSA as a full voting member in 1995. Mountainside, which previously purchased flow rights through Cranford, joined the RVSA as a member municipality in 1999. Winfield Park and portions of Fanwood and Linden are also connected into the system, however, are not members of the RVSA.
The RVSA prides itself on being in the forefront of initiating programs designed to protect the environment. In 1991, the RVSA made history when it became the first of New Jersey's ocean-dumping Authorities to cease the disposal of sludge (the stabilized and concentrated organic material removed in the treatment of the wastewater) in the ocean and initiated a land-based beneficial reuse program for its sludge. Since that time, the RVSA's sludge has been used in agricultural applications, for the reclamation of strip mining sites, and as landfill cover material. The RVSA is also one of the few regional wastewater treatment plants that has a tertiary treatment process. This produces an extremely clean effluent which further protects the environment and enhances the quality of the river water that it discharges into.