Finally tonight, residents in a handful of towns this November will have to make a critical choice whether their municipality should sell their public water and sewer systems to private companies.

It's become an increasingly enticing offer for town leaders who are trying to balance their books while keeping up with rising costs for infrastructure upgrades.

But as opponents tell Ted Goldberg, it's a risky gamble for our most precious resource.

The South Orange Village water utility is starting to show its age.

Much of the system was built in the early 1900s.

The Crest Drive storage tank and the Brentwood water sphere need maintenance work, and it will take time and money to find and replace hundreds of lead service lines.

The estimate has me somewhere between five and 15% of the lines.

Douglas Newman led a task force to outline South Orange is options in how to handle the water utility going forward.

The village might sell the whole thing to New Jersey American Water, a private company that does maintenance for South Orange and supplies many municipalities statewide.

Because of the capital infrastructure costs that are on the horizon.

Because of the lead line replacement and because, in essence, as an example, you know, while South Orange doesn't have to deal with that directly, the bulk water supply pricing, we think, will go up.

We remain just slightly more than a penny a gallon.

And so as we look at across the board of what people pay for in their lives, for the opportunity to have clean slate, safe, reliable, dependable, all affordable water we think is very sound investments, very small amount of money.

President Mark McDonough is trying to buy the water utilities for South Orange and Gloucester Township, and he'll be successful if voters approve two referenda this November.

He argues that a private company is better suited to clean and deliver drinking water than some places as communities pool the cost of expensive upgrades.

They just operate better If you have a better base to work from and the town time of small town water wastewater systems is really challenging now.

And a lot of mayors have realized that this is not a business that they necessarily want to be in.

One of those mayors is Jody Veler.

They've changed out the water meters.

They're changing out any lead pipes.

You know, So they they came into the community, you know, when they hit the ground running.

She leads Salem City, where voters approved a sale to New Jersey American Water last November.

We're not carrying the insurances and the staffing issues with the, you know, the water and sewer that will help us be able to hopefully bring on staffing in other areas.

She says there were minor bugs in transitioning to a private company, but that had Salem held on to its water.

The city would have had to jack up rates.

New Jersey American Water has promised multiyear rate freezes in communities they've joined.

And that will be true as long as American water has control over those rates.

But once it goes to the Board of Public Utilities as part of a rate case, the Board of Public Utilities is going to set a new rate for all ratepayers.

And they're not going to honor an agreement that American Water had with the town.

Their motives are profits, not consumer affordability.

Some groups have argued against private ownership of utilities, fearing price hikes and loss of control.

Food and Water Watch organizer Sam Difalco says communities like South Orange should think long and hard before voting.

We really want residents to think about this as a permanent sale and a permanent loss of democratic control of their water resources, because once it's sold, it's in the private companies hands.

Which could be a good thing or a bad thing, all depending on your perspective.

In South Orange, I'm Ted Goldberg.

NJ Spotlight News.

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