New Jersey’s Legionella Law: Implementation of Water Management Program Required for Covered Buildings by December 12

Owners of New Jersey properties with high-rises, hotels, senior housing, and buildings with pools, spas, or decorative fountains are now subject to a Legionella water management program mandate.  P.L. 2024, c.66, signed on September 12, 2024, requires owners of properties with buildings covered by the new law to develop and implement a written water management program to control Legionella bacteria in water features on-site. The deadline for preparation of such program was September 12, 2026 and implementation of the program must occur by December 12, 2026.

Buildings Covered

The Legionella statute identifies eight categories of covered buildings that require a program, including:

• health care facilities (licensed hospitals providing in-patient services, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, comprehensive personal care homes, residential health care facilities, and dementia care homes);
• correctional facilities with centralized hot water;
• residential high-rises of six or more floors with centralized potable water heating;
• hotels, motels, and similar transient-use properties where a centralized water heater serves twenty-five or more units as well as senior and disability-designated residential buildings with the same unit threshold;
• any building a health authority ties to an Legionella outbreak; and
• any building with five or more dwelling units containing a whirlpool, spa, pool, cooling tower or evaporative condenser, indoor ornamental fountain, mister, atomizer, air wash, or humidifier, or other non-potable system that releases water aerosols in the building or on the property.

Water Management Program Required to Be Implemented

Legionella water management programs must be consistent with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE) Standard 188-2018, which requires a designated program team, flow diagrams of the building's water systems, control locations with defined limits, monitoring, documented corrective action, and periodic verification.  Additional requirements of the program include written notice posted at the building once the program is implemented, retention of all program records on site for five years (to be furnished to the Department of Health immediately on request), and mandatory periodic sampling for certain buildings. Certain buildings with one covered water feature also may limit its program to that one item rather than the entire building.

Status of Rulemaking/Current Applicability

New Jersey’s Departments of Health and Environmental Protection were each directed to adopt implementing rules for the new law by September 12, 2026.  Those rules have not been proposed or adopted to date. Regardless, that failure to act does not suspend the obligations of a building-owner which run from the statute's effective date.  As such, an applicability determination should be confirmed by an owner building by building and documented.  If a program is required, the program must be implemented by the December 12, 2026 deadline in order to: meet the requirements of the new law; to properly respond to any enforcement action following an investigation related to a future reported case of Legionnaires' disease or civil litigation; and to avoid the assessment of penalties or other injunctive relief sought by the State as authorized by this new law.

If you have questions regarding the applicability of P.L. 2024, c.66, or developing and implementing a water management program, please contact Amie C. Kalac (AKalac@cullenllp.com), Neil Yoskin (NYoskin@cullenllp.com) or Paul Recupero (PRecupero@cullenllp.com).

Please note that this is a general overview of the law and no content within this excerpt constitutes legal advice. Nothing herein creates an attorney-client relationship between the authors and the reader.