16. Cost of Living Beyond the Mortgage

Principal, interest and property tax are the lines every buyer models. This section covers what sits underneath them in Ridgewood: a Village-owned water utility in the middle of a nine-figure treatment program, a sewer charge that never appears as a bill, a garbage service with no fee, a permit schedule that matters the moment you renovate a 1930s house, and two energy rate changes from the state’s capacity auction. Every figure is cited to the issuing agency or flagged.

Ridgewood Water

Ridgewood Water is a department of the Village of Ridgewood, not a private utility. It serves four municipalities: Ridgewood, Glen Rock, Midland Park and Wyckoff, from 53 deep wells plus purchased water from the Passaic Valley Water Commission, the Borough of Hawthorne and Veolia.¹⁹⁸ It serves roughly 61,700 customers.¹⁹⁹ Bills are quarterly.²⁰⁰

Rate structure. Three components, all set by Village ordinance (most recently Ord. 4085, adopted March 11, 2026):²⁰¹

1. A fixed quarterly facility fee by meter size.
2. A fixed quarterly PFAS surcharge by meter size, added in 2024.
3. A volume charge per 1,000 gallons (which includes a $0.01 state tax). There are no consumption tiers.

Ridgewood Water residential rates, 2024 through 2026 (as of September 7, 2026)²⁰²

H1 = January through June billing; H2 = July through December. Rates for 2022 and 2023 (Ord. 3945, adopted April 12, 2023) are not on the current rate page and are flagged below.

Rate increases, computed from the table above. Volume rate: +3.0% (mid-2024), +9.0% (mid-2025), +7.8% (mid-2026); cumulative +21.1% from early 2024 to late 2026. Facility fee, 5/8” meter: +9.0% (2025), +8.0% (2026); cumulative +17.7%. PFAS surcharge, 5/8” meter: +75% (mid-2024), +50% (2025), +10% (2026); cumulative +189%. Every increase has taken effect with the third-quarter bill.

What a household of four pays. Ridgewood Water does not publish a typical-household figure. The table below assumes 25,000 gallons per quarter (about 275 gallons per day, which is on the high side of a four-person indoor load and includes some summer irrigation). Adjust up or down; the fixed charges do not change with use.

Modeled quarterly and annual water bill at 2026 H2 rates, 25,000 gal/quarter (computed)

At 20,000 gallons per quarter the 5/8” bill is $217.61; at 30,000 it is $286.61. The same 5/8” household at 25,000 gallons paid $189.60 per quarter at 2024 H1 rates. That is a 33.0% increase in the total bill in thirty months, of which the PFAS surcharge accounts for $26.66 of the $62.51 rise. The PFAS surcharge is now 16% of the quarterly bill.

The PFAS program. In 2020 New Jersey adopted maximum contaminant levels of 14 parts per trillion for PFOA and 13 ppt for PFOS. Ridgewood Water has been out of compliance since. Its April 2023 public notice reported PFOA above the MCL at 23 treatment plants (running annual averages 17 to 31 ppt) and PFOS above the MCL at 4 plants (14 to 17 ppt).²⁰³ The utility entered an Administrative Consent Order with NJDEP in May 2023.²⁰⁴ The remedy is to consolidate 31 treatment points into 12 granular-activated-carbon treatment facilities.²⁰⁵

The compliance picture, from the utility’s own quarterly notices:²⁰⁶²⁰⁷

As of July 16, 2026: seven of the twelve facilities are online, four more are “on track to be completed by the end of 2026,” and the last (Cedar Hill, Wyckoff) is expected in the first quarter of 2027.²⁰⁸ The 2026 Water Quality Report states 11 of 12 will be online by year-end 2026.²⁰⁹ No boil-water notice was in effect as of the retrieval date, and the 2024 and 2025 quality reports show no violations for lead, copper, nitrate or disinfectants.²¹⁰²¹¹ The PFOA and PFOS MCL violations remain open.

Cost and funding. The Village has not published a single total. The utility’s director has described it as roughly a $100 million project; news accounts citing the utility put it at $98 million to $117 million, with the largest facility (Cedar Hill) at $12.2 million.²¹²²¹³ Documented pieces: bond ordinances of $42 million and $18.5 million adopted February 8, 2023, and a further $11 million bond ordinance in late 2024 (both from news accounts; the ordinances themselves are on the Village site, which blocked retrieval);²¹⁴²¹⁵ three New Jersey Infrastructure Bank loans totaling $18,547,052 closed January 26, 2026;²¹⁶ a $2.8 million EPA grant and a $1 million state grant.²¹⁷

The settlement. The Village authorized execution of a settlement response in its litigation against 3M and DuPont on December 6, 2023; the terms were discussed in closed session and the public minutes do not state a dollar amount.²¹⁸ Separately, the federal court approved the national water-provider class settlements with 3M and DuPont in 2024–2025, and the State of New Jersey’s own settlements (up to $450 million from 3M and approximately $2.5 billion combined) were approved in 2026.²¹⁹†

Expected rate impact going forward. The PFAS surcharge has risen every year since it was created and the last four facilities plus Cedar Hill are still being built and financed.† The direction is not in doubt. Debt service on roughly $80 million of PFAS bonds and loans, less whatever settlement proceeds offset it, is a cost that will be in the facility fee and surcharge for decades.

Lead service lines. This is the item most buyers of a 1930s house do not know about. Ridgewood Water reports approximately 1,200 known customer-side lead service lines remaining plus 250 lines of unknown material, after 500 replacements in Phase 1 (2025–2026); 175 owners have signed up for Phase 2, which goes to bid this summer.²²⁰²²¹ State law requires all lead and galvanized lines replaced by 2031.²²² The utility replaces the public side; the owner pays for the curb-to-house segment. Owners who opt in to the Village contractor can pay the invoice within 14 days or finance over 30 years as a special assessment on the property tax bill. The utility’s own example: a $5,000 replacement financed over 30 years costs about $8,000, or $267 per year, and the assessment stays with the property and transfers to the buyer.²²³ Ask for the service-line material in due diligence; the utility publishes a lookup tool.²²⁴

Sewer

Ridgewood operates its own Water Pollution Control Facility. For residential users, there is no sewer bill: Village Code §238-59A puts residential and small non-residential users (one equivalent dwelling unit or less) on ad valorem taxation, meaning sewer is inside the tax rate.²²⁵ Only large dischargers and tax-exempt users pay a per-1,000-gallon charge.²²⁶ A portion of the Village is instead tributary to the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority, which lists “portions of Ridgewood” among its eleven member areas.²²⁷†

Solid waste

Garbage is a Village service with no separate fee. Collection is twice weekly from the rear or side yard (containers within 20 feet of the house, 32 gallons and 80 pounds maximum): Monday and Thursday west of Maple Avenue, Tuesday and Friday east of it.²²⁸²²⁹ Bulk items are collected curbside on alternating Wednesdays, seven items maximum, nothing over 100 pounds, no building materials.²³⁰²³¹ An unscheduled pickup costs $150 (up to 6 cubic yards) or $250 (over 6).²³² Curbside recycling runs on an area calendar (eight areas); the Village also operates a recycling center at Lakeview.²³³† Yard waste must be containerized (paper bags or cans); grass clippings may not be mixed with leaves or brush; loose leaves may be placed at the curb only during the dates on the annual leaf collection schedule, at least 10 feet from a storm drain, with fines up to $2,000 per violation.²³⁴†

Permit fees for common projects

The Village fee schedule is Chapter 145 of the Code, last amended for construction in December 2024 (Ord. 4026) and for land-use and soil permits on July 15, 2026 (Ord. 4102).²³⁵²³⁶ From the Code:

Two things are verifiable regardless. First, any project that adds more than 200 square feet of impervious surface (a patio, a driveway widening, an addition) now triggers a $300 engineering review on top of the building permit, doubled this summer.²⁴⁵ Second, removing any tree of 8 inches diameter or more on your own lot requires a permit and a replacement tree, under an ordinance rewritten in April 2025.²⁴⁶

Graydon Pool

Graydon is the Village’s sand-bottom swimming pond. The 2026 season ran May 30 through August 30 plus Labor Day weekend, and the Village offered free memberships to qualifying residents 65 and older.²⁴⁷ The Village’s 2026 fee schedule: resident adult (16 to 61) $145 in season ($131 early bird in April; $75 from August 1), resident child (2 to 15) $135 ($121 / $70), resident senior 62+ and disabled resident $35, non-resident adult $235, non-resident child $210, babysitter badge $195, with a 3% convenience fee on credit card purchases.²⁴⁸ These are unchanged from 2023. For a family of four, two adults and two children come to $560 at the in-season rate, $504 at the early-bird rate.

Parking

Commuter and Central Business District permit prices are covered in §13. For carrying-cost purposes, an owner who commutes by train and cannot walk to the station should carry the annual Ridgewood resident commuter permit in the table below.

Homeowner’s and flood insurance

The last NAIC state table available to me puts New Jersey’s average HO-3 premium at $1,309 (2021 data, rank 23 of 51), against a national average of $1,411.²⁴⁹ That average covers every house in the state; a $1.4 million Ridgewood colonial insured to replacement cost will not be near it, and I will not invent a range.†

What is specific to Ridgewood’s housing stock and does move a quote: pre-war construction (knob-and-tube or cloth-wrapped wiring where never replaced), slate and tile roofs (higher replacement cost, and some carriers require an inspection or exclude them past a certain age), and underground heating-oil tanks, which most carriers will not insure for leakage and which many buyers require removed or tested before closing. None of these are exotic in Ridgewood; all of them are underwriting questions.

Flood insurance is required by federally regulated lenders only if the house sits in a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area, and parts of Ridgewood along the Ho-Ho-Kus Brook and Saddle River do.† The FEMA Flood Map Service Center lookup by address is free and should be run before an offer, not after.

Electric and gas

PSE&G serves Ridgewood. Supply prices are set by the state’s annual Basic Generation Service auction, and the June 2025 result was the largest in memory. The BPU’s certified 2025 auction produced a 17.24% increase, $26.87 per month, for a PSE&G residential customer using 650 kWh, from $155.84 to $182.71 effective June 1, 2025; the Board attributed it to PJM’s capacity auction.²⁵⁰ The February 2026 auction reversed a sliver of that: a 1.8% decrease, $3.23 per month, to $180.23 for the same customer effective June 1, 2026.²⁵¹ The Board also authorized a one-time $25 residential credit in August 2026, funded from clean-energy and solar compliance accounts, after two $30 credits in July and August 2025.²⁵² Net: PSE&G supply is about 15.6% above where it stood in May 2025, and the 2026 relief is smaller than the 2025 relief. A 4-bedroom colonial with central air will use more than 650 kWh in summer months.†

Typical annual carrying cost beyond principal, interest and taxes

Hypothetical: a $1.4 million, 4-bedroom, 1930s colonial on a 5/8” or 3/4” meter, family of four, one train commuter. Each line is either cited or flagged; the flagged lines are shown blank on purpose.

The subtotal is deliberately incomplete. Gas and insurance are the two largest missing lines, and on a house of this size and age each is plausibly larger than the water line. The number to take from this table is not the subtotal. It is that the fixed, non-negotiable Village-and-utility charges on a Ridgewood house run roughly $3,000 to $4,000 a year before insurance, before heating, and before anything breaks, and that the water portion has been rising 8 to 9 percent a year with a treatment program not yet finished.

What I tell my buyers: two questions for the seller’s disclosure that are not on the standard form. Is there an oil tank, above or below ground, active or abandoned? And what is the water service line made of? The first decides whether you can insure the house and at what price. The second decides whether you inherit a 30-year assessment or a $5,000 invoice in the next five years.

† Figures marked with a dagger are best-effort research, so verify them with the issuing office (the Village of Ridgewood, the school district, the county, the state or the utility) before making judgment calls or decisions on them.