Jersey City Drank It First
The water in my glass this morning fell as rain over Morris County, some twenty-three miles west of my kitchen. It pooled behind a dam on the Rockaway River and came down to Jersey City by gravity, the way it has since 1904. It carries a trace of chlorine, as almost every American city's water does now. Mine got there first, on September 26, 1908. The chlorine arrived in the middle of a lawsuit, dosed toward two hundred thousand people without a public hearing, a statute, or a permission slip of any kind. The fight that followed is the closest thing this country has to a founding trial over what a government may add to everyone's glass. The question that trial settled is back. […]https://bolesblogs.com/2026/10/11/jersey-city-drank-it-first/