The state Department of Health is demanding changes after multiple cases of Legionnaires Disease at two extended-care facilities at a South Jersey complex.
The agency has curtailed admissions and readmissions at the long-term care and assisted living units for The Fountains at Atco.
In a 27-page letter, a DOH official says “water management concerns” involving the Legionnaires’ bacteria pose “an immediate and serious risk of harm to facility residents.”
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The letter includes more than eight pages of required improvements at the Hayes Mill Road facilities, including the hiring by each unit of a state-approved administrator consultant and a certified infection control practitioner.
It noted DOH has conducted three investigations into Legionnaires' disease at the Atco sites since 2014, looking at the deaths of three residents and the hospitalization of three others.
A seventh case, in March 2026, hospitalized a person described as a visitor to the facilities.
Representatives of The Fountains at Atco could not be reached for comment.
The long-term care unit had 52 residents in early March, while the assisted living wing served 105 people. A retirement care community on the property has 346 beds, the letter said.
Although Atco is a part of neighboring Waterford Township, the care complex is in Winslow.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Legionnaires’ bacterium becomes dangerous when it grows in warm, stagnant water systems, including plumbing. It can cause a serious form of pneumonia.
“People catch it by breathing in tiny water droplets or mist containing the bacteria,” says the health agency’s website.
According to the DOH letter, both state and Camden County health departments since January 2025 have offered multiple recommendations to improve the facilities’ water quality.
But state health officials contacted the facility in December 2025, expressing concern that “current potable water conditions continued to support bacterial growth."
And testing found Legionella bacteria in the facilities’ water system in February, April and June of this year, the Aug. 12 letter added.
It also noted high turnover levels for the units’ management, with at least eight administrators for the nursing facility since November 2022 and four assisted living administrators.
According to the letter, the facilities’ operator in January 2026 indicated it was planning or making changes in hopes of having “full remedy of the facility-wide water systems” by the end of this year.
But the letter noted a site visit by DOH personnel in February of this year found "immediate control measures had not been implemented...despite being recommended several times."
Even with the health agencies' suggested measures "and the retention of multiple consultants, the facility has been unable to demonstrate that they effectively have Legionella under control,” said the letter from Gene Rosenblum, director of the DOH Office of Program Compliance.
The care facilities are required to make weekly progress reports under the directed order of correction, which has no set expiration date.
(This story was updated to correct an error.)
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter for the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Email: [email protected].