South Jersey residents voted to reject a $143M deal to privatize its sewage system. Now the township is back to the drawing board.

For some residents in Gloucester Township, voting against the $143 million sale of their sewage system was just as important as voting for president.

And for others, it was the only reason they went to the polls.

“There was people who were saying, I’m not voting for either president, and they were just there for the sewer,” said Keith Gibbons, an organizer against the sewage sale referendum, of voters outside local polling places on Election Day.

A tense battle of lawn signs and campaign ads came to a close on Election Night when the residents of the South Jersey township rejected a referendum to sell their sewage system to New Jersey American Water, thanks in part to the work of Gibbons and six other local advocates who were behind the push to keep the system public, telling residents that their sewage bills would increase and alleging a lack of transparency for their local government on the matter — which the township denied.

If voters had permitted the sale, the $143 million would have wiped out the municipalities’ roughly $65 million in debt and allowed the township to invest in law enforcement, recreation, and other community resources. A successful referendum also would have followed a trend in the region which has experienced more than two dozen water system purchases throughout the past six years.

Tom Cardis, the township’s business administrator, said he respects voters’ decision, but was disappointed when residents ultimately rejected the proposition because the sale was an opportunity to invest more money in the sewage system’s infrastructure and the township and reduce taxpayers’ burden. Now without it, the township is looking for other revenue streams — which he calls a “challenge.”

“We’re always in a state of financial struggle,” Cardis said, noting that this situation was not unique to Gloucester. “I’m going to continue to look for revenues, but I will tell you, unfortunately, the burden of the revenue is going to fall back to the taxpayer.”

Cardis hopes that the township won’t have to cut public services as a result of the financial crunch. He said the township is “looking at everything” to determine possible revenue streams as the township faces increasing costs in other areas, including trash removal and support for the local animal shelter.

“We’re certainly looking at controlling cost, cutting back where we can cut back and still not affect the quality of service the residents expect,” he said.

If the township successfully passed the referendum, New Jersey American Water would have also invested $90 million over 10 years in the sewer system’s infrastructure.

Without the extra cash, the township is bracing for any maintenance or system issues that are dire or costly.

“We’re going to continue to address areas of concern and hopefully they don’t show themselves in the form of an emergency,” Cardis said.

“We may be more reactive than proactive with servicing the system,” he added.

Gibbons and the handful of other activists who spearheaded a grassroots effort — with signs, fliers, a website, a Facebook group, and a podcast — against the referendum gathered at Skeeters Pub on Election Night, checking Camden County’s election returns webpage as results on the referendum trickled in.

“The no votes kept climbing, and the yeses were just trickling up,” Gibbons said. “So we kind of knew very early, probably by nine o’clock, that, like, hey, this thing is going our direction.”

But it’s a direction not taken by other New Jerseyans who have been presented with similar propositions on their ballots.

On Election Day, residents in South Orange voted to sell their water system to NJ American Water. And last year, residents in Salem approved a similar referendum that approved the sale of its water and sewer systems to the company.

Cardis thinks that some of the opposition to the sale in Gloucester Township was exaggerated and that it could have “scared a lot of people.”

“It would probably scare me too if I didn’t know about it,” Cardis said.

The sale of the sewer system could be on the ballot again in the future, but that’s up to the town council and there’s no indication of if or when that could happen, Cardis said.

Gibbons owes his grassroots group’s success to their “boots on the ground” efforts.

“There wasn’t a day that went by since it was announced that I didn’t have something on my plate that day to go handle and do,” Gibbons said. “And it could have been 20 minutes, or it could have been five hours of the day.”