Del. test cases: When lead is in your water
New Castle response is lesson in how agencies respond
When a few homes tested in New Castle showed higher-than-acceptable lead levels, it triggered a process that's still in progress.
New Castle water employees in 2014 went to their stock of 20 homes scheduled for testing every three years, and three were discovered with elevated levels of lead. So they tested those again and the homes next door, but this time only one was found with high lead results.
They're still monitoring for lead.
The disaster in Flint, Michigan — where thousands in the city north of Detroit were poisoned with lead-tainted water — has communities across the country questioning the safety of their own drinking supply. Earlier this month, it was Delaware state Sen. Greg Lavelle and Wilmington Councilwoman Hanifa Shabazz who raised the point.
“Given these concerns, and reports that other municipalities and suppliers may have related issues, it is of the utmost importance that the safety of Delaware’s water supply is studied and confirmed on a regular basis," Lavelle wrote in a letter to the Public Service Commission and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
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Delaware state water officials say they're constantly monitoring quality levels and conditions of lead. Office of Drinking Water Administrator Ed Hallock has said a few systems are being monitored following corrective treatment, but nothing remotely on the same level as in Flint.
That community is still dealing with problems from the lead contamination, the result of switching to more corrosive water from the Flint River in April 2014 and not using certain techniques to make sure it is clean. Federal regulators say state and city officials aren't doing enough to fix problems.
The controversy has spilled over to become an issue during the presidential campaign and numerous communities are reevaluating how drinking water is handled. A lawsuit was filed Thursday against the city of Chicago saying it should remove thousands of lead pipes that connects homes to the city's water supply.
The response in New Castle is an example of how Delaware agencies respond when issues are detected in drinking water.
It's not the water supply and it's not the water system that made their tests in 2014 ping for lead, said city of New Castle Municipal Services Commission Water Supervisor Jay Guyer. It's the homes that water spills into — and much of the responsibility for not drinking lead falls on the homeowners.
"Something in water services that always gets tricky is where does our responsibility end and the customers' responsibility pick up," Guyer said. "A big challenge we have is trying to make our customers understand our water meets all of the state and federal regulations."
The process of sampling homes' water, lab testing it and taking corrective and educational action isn't unique to New Castle.
Testing discovered exceedances at Country Club Village near Georgetown in September 2015, and the system will undergo two six-month rounds of testing like New Castle. The Pyle Center, a non-community water system in Georgetown, was on annual monitoring in 2015 when they had an exceedance of the lead action level and so will also do two, six-month rounds of monitoring this year.
though it is the only one of the state's 485 public water systems off its tri-annual testing schedule because of lead levels found in 2014.
If New Castle this year can prove the 2014 lead levels are no longer present, the system can return to its previous testing schedule of once every three years. Below is a step-by-step look at how that city discovered, responded and is monitoring for lead.
The lead was detected during regular tri-annual monitoring conducted in July 2014. When the water tests clean, they check again three years later, the longest period of time the Delaware Office of Drinking Water allows systems under its jurisdiction to go between tests.
There's a list of 40 homes put together in 1992, and New Castle water employees use them as their gauge because they meet requirements set forth by the EPA, such as plumbing installed before 1983, when lead solder was banned. Only 20 are tested while a system is on reduced monitoring programs.
"We look for the worst houses than can possibly have the lead issues," said New Castle Assistant Water Supervisor Ryan Jaeger.
Residents take the samples. Experts do the testing.
New Castle water employees gave test home owners a plastic bag with a plastic bottle inside, along with a set of instruction. The employees can't collect the sample themselves because the water they need must sit still in the pipes for at least six hours.
"The lead and copper testing is a difficult process to go through. We have a form letter that reviews with the customer how to properly collect the sample. We go to each resident, we give them the sample packet, review with them the results," Guyer said. "We reinforce in them the water has to sit motionless in their house, or their piping and plumbing, for at least six hours. It has to be a first draw sample. You have to get up in the morning and, before you do anything else, collect that sample."
If they don't follow the instructions correctly, he said it can ruin the sample. Residents don't have to participate, and Guyer said sometimes they don't.
Residents who do agree collect their samples and leave it in a pre-arranged location for water employees to collect the following day.
Once those samples are collected, they are tested.
The samples are delivered to Eurofins QC laboratory in New Castle, where they're tested specifically for copper and lead. That process can take two to three weeks, Guyer said.
If contaminants are discovered, water employees repeat the process at the homes where lead was found and at the homes nearby.
Two of the original three 2014 lead-positive samples, when re-tested, came back with negative results. EPA regulations require reports and public education, regardless.
It takes about two weeks between the collection of the first samples and the distribution of results to the public. Residents who's water tests positive have those results explained to them before the second round of testing begins.
New Castle had another problem. Almost immediately after a few of the residence samples came back with too-high lead levels, the water system administrators learned of another contaminant in their well.
Discovering a PFC contaminant meant New Castle would switch to buying water from a nearby utility. That water was tested to be sure it was not more corrosive — and more likely to leach lead from pipes — than the water they were using before.
In the 13 months that followed, New Castle used a temporary system, and on Nov. 30 New Castle switched back to its original system now outfitted with state-of-the-art filters which can clear the PFC contaminant.
During this process, testing at residences in New Castle for lead was paused. Because the water system administrators knew the water they pumped wasn't contaminated and because they had told the public how to reduce or eliminate lead leaching from their own pipes, the pause did not delay their responsibility to test for lead.
In the six months that follow March, Guyer said his employees will collect another 40 samples from homes in New Castle. If those are clean, the six months that follow that round of testing will see another 40 samples taken.
When no lead exceedances are discovered, New Castle will return to its tri-annual testing schedule.
The results — good or bad — are shared with homeowners directly.
That's done in part with a two-page report about their results, which includes information about common sources of lead in drinking water and some remedies for reducing its presence. That includes running water for 30 seconds to flush it before use and replacing parts of the home's plumbing.
New Castle mails to each of its water customers a regular consumer confidence report, which Guyer said always details lead and copper contamination, but which has had that language expanded since the 2014 detection to offer more details. The report is also online and filed with the Office of Drinking Water.
Contact Adam Duvernay at aduvernay@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2785.
This article has been updated to correctly detail other Delaware water systems which are being monitored after lead exceedances were discovered. An earlier version of this article did not include them.