Lead poisoning threat made worse by ‘partial’ remediation efforts, experts say

As more and more cities rip out lead pipes to reduce residents’ potential drinking water exposure, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed banning partial replacements because of the posed dangers. 

It’s a common practice among utilities that can actually spike lead levels in individual homes and expose families to more of the toxic material, according to the EPA and other leading environmental advocacy groups. 

The problem is playing out throughout the country: Public utilities replace old water lines to reduce lead poisoning exposure in our drinking water. But in many cases, utilities only replace the lines on public land, leaving old lead pipes in place on the private land of households and other structures.

Despite lead pipes being banned from use in the 1980s the presence of lead in drinking water remains a dangerous threat for many across the country.

In its latest water regulation proposal released at the end of November, EPA officials said they want to ban all partial replacements, except in cases where it’s an emergency repair or planned infrastructure work unrelated to lead line replacements. 

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The EPA first sounded the alarm about partial lead line replacements with the release of an agency study in 2011. The federal agency recently declared that partial replacements are not eligible for State Revolving Loan dollars, which could help deter cities from carrying those out in the future.

Jim Grawe connects a new copper pipe to a home’s water line as a crew from Great Lakes Plumbing replaces a lead water service line on Highland Avenue in Buffalo, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023. 

Derek Gee, Buffalo News

Partial replacement of lead lines is universally condemned 

In East Chicago, Indiana, one of the country’s most industrialized cities just outside of Chicago, water department officials tried conducting only partial replacements in 2018. That was until community groups, attorneys and environmental activists sounded the alarm about how dangerous that can be. 

At the time, attorneys argued that connecting new service lines to aged lead lines causes corrosion and further exposes homeowners to lead in their drinking water, calling it a “universally condemned” practice.  

A city attorney told a Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism reporter that the city ceased partial replacements in August 2018, and fewer than 50 were performed. 

East Chicago has been grappling with environmental harms from lead, arsenic and other industrial waste byproducts for decades. The city was thrust into the spotlight in summer 2016 with news of dangerously high lead and arsenic levels in the soil at a public housing complex. The crisis prompted an exodus of families from the West Calumet Housing Complex as they scrambled to find other, already-in-demand Section 8 housing. 

The complex has since been demolished. Nearby neighborhoods — part of an EPA Superfund site  — have had yards remediated of lead and arsenic.

Water rate hikes phased in over three years, coupled with revenue bonds, will allow East Chicago to continue removing lead pipes in the Superfund site. Eventually, lead pipes will be replaced elsewhere in the city. 

This summer, Winna Guzman, director of the city’s water department, testified before the utility rate board in seeking a water rate increase. She said the department replaced 615 lead lines since 2017, but once funding “was virtually exhausted,” the project had to end. 

Hundreds of lead service lines have been replaced in the Superfund site, but an estimated 3,400 remain at a cost of roughly $30 million to $35 million. Licensed daycares operating out of residential homes will be eligible for replacement.

Guzman said the department wants to replace all lead lines at no cost to the homeowner, noting it would otherwise be “cost-prohibitive” to residents. 

Workers look for access to the main water line behind a Gary, Indiana, home this past October as part of Indiana American Water’s efforts to replace all lead pipes statewide for its customers. 

John J. Watkins, The Times

The Indiana Finance Authority also is assisting the East Chicago water department with $10 million for lead line replacements — in the form of a $5 million dollar grant and a $5 million no-interest loan, a city attorney said. 

The East Chicago utility is expected to receive an additional $6.2 million in operating revenue from water rate increases phased in over three years. A portion of this revenue will be used to fund a revenue bond for capital improvements totaling $26.5 million. Of this, $10.875 million will be dedicated to lead service line and meter pit replacements, the city attorney said. 

‘Tough choices’ when utilities don’t pay for lead line replacement

Decades before the dangers of partial lead pipe replacements were on anybody’s radar, the Concord, New Hampshire, Water Department, and others throughout the country, started replacing only the public side of lead lines. Concord officials began replacements in the 1970s in conjunction with street work, sewer or stormwater upgrades, leaving the private side of the lines in place.

Marco Philippon, water treatment superintendent, said Concord carried on with partial line replacements through 2016, when the final two lead service lines in the city were replaced.

A worker removes an old lead water pipe from beneath a street before replacing it with new copper pipe in Newark, N.J., in 2021. The city replaced 23,000 lead lines in less than three years.

Associated Press

Customer-owned lines were left in place because the city “does not own or maintain the water service from the property line in,” according to Philippon. Philippon said Concord only has “lead goosenecks,” or small sections of malleable lead pipe.

The water department in Concord is busy working to complete its lead service line inventory by Oct. 16, 2024, at which time they plan to educate homeowners about their options, Philippon said. 

The city is still not paying for or completing water service line replacements on the private side, Philippon told Lee Enterprises.

The proposal, called the lead and copper rule improvements, would for the first time require utilities to replace lead pipes even if their lead levels aren’t too high.

Concord did not respond to requests for comment when asked why the city is leaving it up to the homeowner to pay for their own replacement despite the associated dangers with partial replacements.

Tom Neltner, senior director for safer chemicals with the Environmental Defense Fund, said it’s disappointing — but not surprising — that some utilities still require even low-income residents to pay to replace their half of the lead pipe.

“If you’re already struggling to get by, if rents are increasing and everything else is going up, even if you’re greatly concerned about lead to protect your kids, you’re going to have to make some tough choices,” Neltner said.

Gregg Seymour, with Indiana American Water, prepares to pull the new water line through the old water line hole to attach it to the main water source as part of a lead pipe replacement project in Gary, Indiana. 

John J. Watkins, The Times Be the first to know

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