Ocean County's water comes from many suppliers and several different aquifers

The table below names each supplier. Each aquifer appears in the words of that supplier's report, with the report's year, because the same rock gets different labels from one report to the next.

Which supplier serves which town?

Your town's own utility is the usual answer, with Toms River on Veolia and Long Beach Island split among several departments.

Each town has its own page with more detail: Lacey and Forked River, Waretown and Ocean Township, Barnegat, Stafford and Manahawkin, Long Beach Island, Toms River and Brick.

Why do the aquifer names differ so much?

They differ because suppliers pump from different depths and label them in their own ways. Barnegat Township draws on the Kirkwood-Cohansey. Barnegat Light, a separate place on the island, goes past 600 feet to the Piney Point. Brick adds a river.

The labels can also conflict. Beach Haven's report says Kirkwood at about 650 feet, while the state assessment it cites names the Atlantic City 800-foot Sand and the Kirkwood-Cohansey Water-table systems. We print what each one says and leave the geology to the New Jersey Water Supply Plan, which treats the 800-foot sand as vital to barrier island communities.

How can you tell whether you are on a well or a utility?

A regular water bill from one of the suppliers above means a utility; no bill and a pressure tank in the house usually means a well. A casing in the yard is a clue, though an old well can stay in the ground after a house connects.

Closing papers help too. Since September 2002, the Private Well Testing Act has required buyer and seller of a house with a private well to receive and review test results before closing. If yours include them, read the story on that test.

If you still are not sure, ask the utility for your town whether your address is a customer.

Is the town water here hard?

Lacey's is low in hardness, at 43 to 48.8 ppm in 2025 data. The same report gives a pH of 7.30 to 7.90.

That pH is a useful contrast. The state geological survey describes Kirkwood-Cohansey water as acidic and "highly corrosive," and private wells in that sand are often acidic. Lacey's plants and its mix of aquifers deliver something different at the tap. For your own town, the hardness and pH lines are in the annual report if the supplier tested them.

Where do you find your annual report?

Start with your supplier's website, and ask the office for a copy if you cannot find it. Some suppliers title it a consumer confidence report. Our brief on reading one explains the columns.

Which entries need a second look?

We could not confirm Stafford's aquifers, could not find Veolia's report for Toms River, and do not list what NJ American Water serves in the county, so customers of those three should go to their own reports.

Stafford's archived page names the systems and nothing about their aquifers. State papers from the 1990s describe the Toms River wells of that time, and they cannot stand in for today. The Township of Ocean report here is from 2015, and Long Beach Township's figures come from earlier years because its 2026 reports are scanned images.