Lead found in water in more than half of homes tested by Buffalo area's largest water systems
Half of the more than 200 households tested in 2023 showed lead in drinking water distributed by the Erie County Water Authority and Buffalo Water Board, according to a Buffalo News analysis of Erie County Health Department data. Lead was found in water in more than half of homes tested by Buffalo area's largest water systems in 2023, according to an analysis of Erie County Health Department data. Peter Michaels' 1902 Victorian home in Depew had a lead service line delivered water to the faucets, which led to higher levels of lead. Tests from 2022 showed lead levels at 19.7 parts per billion, higher than the current EPA "action level" of 15 parts perbn. A subsequent test in August showed even more lead, 28.2 parts perbillion. The results were provided in response to Freedom of Information Law requests from The Buffalo News. However, the EPA has proposed changes to its water sampling regimen, which advocates for cleaner drinking water say will likely result in more households showing lead and in higher amounts.
Publié : il y a 4 semaines par Jay Tokasz dans Environment
Peter Michaels suspected his 1902 Victorian home in Depew had a lead service line delivering water to the faucets, so when the Erie County Water Authority sent a letter nearly two years ago offering to sample the water for lead, he figured it would be a good idea.
The Water Authority dropped off several small plastic containers with instructions to fill them up with tap water first thing in the morning and set them outside in the provided bag for pickup.
Michaels followed the directions, and test results from September 2022 showed lead in the water at 19.7 parts per billion, higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s current “action level” of 15 parts per billion for lead. A subsequent test in August showed even more lead, 28.2 parts per billion.
“If some federal funding becomes available to replace that piping, I want to be in on that,” said Michaels, whose family has been drinking water from those pipes for four decades . “Do I like having that lead pipe? No. I wish it were different. We would love to get that out of here.”
Medical experts say there is no safe level of lead in the blood, and even small amounts may cause health and behavioral problems, particularly in children. And yet potentially thousands of Western New Yorkers still may be ingesting lead in water at home.
From Angola to Lockport, lead is being detected in tap water, most often due to decades-old lead service lines that connect homes to water mains, but sometimes because of old pipe solders or fixtures that were in place prior to bans on the use of lead in plumbing.
Half of the more than 200 households tested in 2023 showed lead in drinking water distributed by the Erie County Water Authority and Buffalo Water Board, according to a Buffalo News analysis of Erie County Health Department data.
In 61 out of 90 homes supplied by water from Niagara County’s three largest municipal water providers, tests in 2023 showed lead levels of at least 1 ppb, and as high as 30.2 ppb.
The Erie County and Niagara County health departments provided the testing results in response to Freedom of Information Law requests from The Buffalo News. It is the first time results of the 2023 lead testing of water samples from the region’s largest water suppliers have been shared with the public.
In addition to the Michaels home, nine other houses tested last year – in Buffalo, the villages of Hamburg and Blasdell, and the cities of Tonawanda, Niagara Falls and Lockport – had lead levels above 15 ppb. An additional 11 properties across Erie and Niagara counties exceeded 10 ppb, a new “action level” under EPA Lead and Copper Rule Improvements that are scheduled to take effect in October. Also among the rule changes is a requirement for water providers to replace all lead and galvanized iron service lines within a 10-year period, at a pace of at least 10% per year.
To be clear, the recent lead testing results do not put Western New York’s largest water providers in trouble with the EPA, which monitors and regulates water systems across the country. Systems are in compliance as long as 90% of homes sampled do not exceed the 15 ppb threshold, according to EPA regulations.
Local water providers have avoided running afoul of the EPA by mitigating how much lead reaches the tap through careful monitoring of water chemistry and adding anti-corrosive treatments to the water.
But the EPA has proposed changing its water sampling regimen, a move that water providers and advocates for cleaner drinking water said will likely result in more households showing lead and in higher amounts.
Water providers said treatment methods aren’t foolproof, and lead levels inside homes can fluctuate.
“There’s all kinds of ways to treat the water to try and limit the amount of lead that leaches into the water, but there’s no way to completely eliminate it,” said Leonard F. Kowalski, executive engineer for the Erie County Water Authority.
Lead levels in a home may vary seasonally with temperature changes, or with a disturbance in the service line, he added.
“So, there’s no guarantee that you’re not going to have a lead release. We do the best we can to treat the water to limit the amount of lead release. But what the EPA is trying to do is eliminate the problem by getting rid of lead service lines,” Kowalski said.
Blood-lead levels in children have trended downward for decades since the 1970s, following bans on lead in paint and gasoline. Yet, researchers are continuing to see adverse effects even from very small amounts of lead in the body, said Katarzyna Kordas, associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University at Buffalo.
“Lead has received a lot of attention because it’s a problem we can’t seem to get rid of,” Kordas said. “We need to think of environmental contamination more broadly, but lead is kind of our poster child. We still talk about it because it’s not safe and because it’s still around us.”
Rates of lead poisoning in children in Western New York, particularly in some ZIP codes of Buffalo, remain concerning. In 2021, 2.8% of children under age 6 in Erie County, and 1.8% in Niagara County, had at least five micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, while the overall rate for New York was 1%.
How much of the current lead poisoning problem may be due to drinking water is unclear, though. Health experts locally have long focused on peeling and chipping lead paint and lead paint dust in the region’s abundance of old homes as the source in most lead poisoning cases.
“We really don’t have very many studies,” Kordas said.
She said some research generally suggests that inhaling lead dust contributes more to high blood-lead levels than drinking water with lead. But, she added, it is really about the dose at which the lead exposures happen.
“There’s so many different exposure scenarios. In Buffalo, we still think about old housing stock and the problems that brings with it,” she said.
With older homes come older water lines, put into the ground long before the EPA in 1986 banned lead from all plumbing. The Erie County Water Authority estimates it still has 6,000 lead service lines in its system. In the City of Buffalo, the number could be as high as 40,000.
Theresa A. McCarthy learned last summer that water taken from the faucet in her nearly 100-year-old Village of Hamburg home contained high amounts of lead.
Water Authority staff recommended that she run the water for several minutes prior to using it to flush out any water that was sitting in a lead service line, and McCarthy said she’s been doing that. The Water Authority did not offer to replace the line, and McCarthy said she has no immediate plans to hire someone for the project.
“I’m a poor old retiree on Social Security, so I can’t afford to have that replaced,” said McCarthy, a retired Buffalo Public Schools secretary. “I’m hoping that down the road they offer something to get it done. I’m kind of waiting.”
The cost of a new service line can run from $4,000 to $10,000, depending on the property.
Michaels said he planned to hold off for now, as well, because the expense is so daunting.
“We’re in the oldest part of Depew, here, so I’m sure there’s several houses,” said Michaels, who has owned the home with his wife, Judith, since 1982. “I know it’s a massive amount of money, but I wish they would get something going and make it available to replace this stuff.”
He said he asked the Water Authority if it would remove the line and put in copper. He was told there was no funding available.
The federal government announced last month that it made $129 million available to water systems in New York State for removing lead service lines, and the authority is applying for a chunk of those funds, Kowalski said.
In addition, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer in May said that he plans to earmark an additional $5 million in congressional directed spending for Erie County to replace 500 lead lines.
The Schumer earmark hasn’t been finalized, yet, and next year is the soonest any shovels could be in the ground with those funds, which would be used to cover both the homeowner’s portion and the Water Authority’s portion of the service line replacement, Kowalski said.
Water Authority officials maintain that they can’t use water rate revenue to pay for a homeowner’s service line replacement, because of potential legal issues, but federal grants would allow for it.
Homes with lead service lines located in “environmental justice areas” such as Lackawanna, parts of Cheektowaga and Amherst and parts of the Village of Blasdell will be prioritized for the earmarked funding, Kowalski said.
Les sujets: Environment-ESG