Thousands of lead water lines may still be being used in Connecticut. What is the state doing to fix it?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Andrew Brown to discuss his article written with Jenna Carlesso, Renata Daou and Shahrzad Rasekh, “A Buried Threat: Thousands in CT might still be drinking water from lead pipes,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Andy’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Andrew. New data obtained by you and your colleagues at the Connecticut Mirror shows there could be as many as 8,000 lead service lines still in use in public water systems throughout the state. Is that not surprising, considering lead plumbing has been banned in the state for almost 40 years?
AB: It was a little bit of a surprise as we started going through this data that there were so many. But it actually was not a surprise to regulators at the US Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, which is responsible for drinking water safety throughout the country, created a new regulation requiring utilities to find these aging lead service lines, and when they created that rule, they estimated millions across the country are still in the ground. So the fact that Connecticut potentially has 1000s is not that big of a surprise if you're actually following and involved in this type of work.
WSHU: But it has surprised homeowners, some of whom have just bought their homes in the past few years. You cite the example of Jarvis Parker in Waterbury, who bought his home about five years ago, only to find out that it had a toxic lead water line. Why is this not coming out before the homes are sold?
AB: I think that water safety in this country is kind of like it's concluded that you're water safe, you're on a public water system, and these lead lines are not like other infrastructure that a house relies on. Right, when people buy a house, they check to make sure the roof isn't leaking, that the basement doesn't flood, and that it has proper electrical service. These lines are underground. They've often been there for more than a century, and they're forgotten. People don't know what pipe runs from under the sidewalk or the street into their house. And so, you know, sometimes we did encounter people who said, you know, when I bought my home, for instance, there was a couple of homeowners who said, when I bought my home in Willimantic, the home inspector actually spotted the lead line coming into the basement. But that's not always on the checklist, right of every home inspector. And so I think that's why this data is so revealing and so important, because oftentimes aging led water lines are just ignored or forgotten.
WSHU: Now, normally, you'd expect that in the older urban areas of the state you'd find these lines, but in some of the more affluent areas in the state, they still have the same problem.
AB: Yes.
WSHU: Why, in a place like Greenwich, for instance?
AB: I think that could probably be attributed to the fact that Greenwich is still an older water system. Many of the lead lines that exist in the country were installed between the late 1800s early 1900s and so if you have a water system that was built and built out during that time, and the you know, the service lines were never replaced in the past 100 years, there is a likelihood that you're going to find a substantial amount of lead. Greenwich is an older system. It may not be an urban center, but it is still an older water system. That is why Aquarian Water, which currently owns them, estimates that they could find hundreds of water lines and lead water lines there. You know, that is the kind of shared fact of all of these places that are identifying suspected lead water lines, which are older water systems. Bridgeport, New London, Middletown, Willimantic, all of these places had water lines built and were around in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and so that is the primary contributor to why you're finding them where they are. If a water system, even if it was built in the 1950s or 60s, lead had become somewhat of a less common material to make service connections out of, and so you're not finding them in the suburbs, which had, you know, water systems built out at a later date.
WSHU: Okay, now you have a situation where the first problem is identifying where these lines are, and the water utilities are tasked with that. How are they going about it, and how efficient has it been?
AB: We talked to many directors of public water systems in Connecticut, and each utility handles it differently. Some utilities like the Wyndham Water Works, which supplies Willimantic, told me that they actually went door to door and house to house, inspecting the water lines. They were physically inspecting the water lines where they enter people's basements. So they have a very high confidence, because they actually put eyes on these pipes. And which ones are not, you know, larger water systems like Aquarian, which supplies Bridgeport and Greenwich, the Regional Water Authority in New Haven, the Metropolitan District Commission in the Hartford region. They have so many customers that they're utilizing machine learning, right? They're inputting data of where they have records about what each service line is made of, and those that machine learning is then predicting where they may or may not find lead in other locations. That's not a foolproof system, right? That is not a guarantee that you're going to find lead where it says you're going to have lead, and it's not a guarantee that you're not going to find lead where it's saying that it's lead-free. So this is really an evolving process at this point, where the utilities are going to be continuously updating and trying to perfect the information that they have. There are many utilities that are relying on what they call tap cards, which are essentially these paper records from the late 1800s and early 1900s that say, you know this, this service line was installed in 1903 and it's made of X, Y or Z. Again, those can be accurate, but there may be, you know, that line may have been replaced in 1955 and nobody recorded it. So there's a lot of work in just identifying where the lead lines are, and the information, unfortunately, is going to change as the utilities continue to do more work on this.
WSHU: Now, when we find those lines, who will pay to fix them? Because that's what happened in Flint, Michigan, the federal government had to come in and fund a lot of that. What's the situation in Connecticut? Who's going to pay for this?
AB: It really is dependent on the utility that the homeowner is supplied by. Many of the utilities we spoke to said that they cannot rely on the individual property owners, who may have a lead line, to pay for that replacement, because if you do that, it's thousands of dollars, and not every homeowner has that upfront capital to be able to do that. So many utilities are saying they will front the cost pool, the entire service line out, which, in many cases, is, you know, owned, a shared ownership between the utility and the homeowner. The money, I guess, would either come through rates, increasing rates on water, all of their water customers. Still, many utilities are hoping to get in line for low-interest loans that were provided by the federal government, some of which can be forgiven. So there is a pot of money. $99 million has come to Connecticut through the federal government for lead service line replacements and identification. But the question is, is whether that's even going to come close to the amount of money it's going to cost to find all of these lead lines and ultimately pull them.
WSHU: We keep hearing about lead, lead, lead. What's the actual health problem that leads to?
AB: We spoke to pediatricians and some engineers who particularly look at lead water lines. The emphasis that they made to us is that lead paint is still the most common contributor to child lead poisoning cases. So the lead paint on window sills is the more common cause of children being lead poisoned, or adults, for that matter. But the pediatricians we spoke to said, essentially, the lead water lines are a particular risk for children who may be consuming powdered baby formula that is mixed with tap water, if that lead line is releasing lead into people's taps, and every day that child is consuming tap water through the formula. That can be a major concern. It really depends on whether that lead line entering a building is essentially leaching into the water utilities across the country, and here in Connecticut, they treat their water with what are known as corrosion inhibitors to prevent things like lead pipes from essentially putting lead into the system and into people's taps. But drinking water engineers have essentially said that's not a guarantee that, on occasion, lead isn't released from that pipe and finds its way into people's tap water.
WSHU: Now also, the Connecticut Mirror is trying to reach out to people, to try and inform them about this, and try and educate people, and find out so that they can be more aware that this is a problem. What exactly are you doing?
AB: We are currently reaching out to people. We're holding three community events in the next month, both in Waterbury, Bridgeport and Willimantic. Those events are in the Connecticut Mirror’s story regarding these lead lines, dates, and times. We have partnered with the Pulitzer Center, which is a reporting grant funder, and we are looking. To sample people's water people who have a suspected lead service line, just to get an indication of whether the corrosion control that the utilities utilize here is actually preventing lead from finding its way to people's sinks. So we're going to be holding those events kind of talking about the reporting that we just published, and seeing if anyone would be willing to allow us to sample their water.
