Tens of thousands of Denver residents drink, bathe and cook with lead-fed water.
The Denver Water crews are traveling as fast as a public utility supplying 1.5 million homes to replace and solder the lead pipes before the soft, toxic metal seeps too much and gradually poisons the people inside.
It’s an estimated $ 500 million project for up to 84,000 homes, and one that won’t be complete for well into the next decade. But so far, state health officials say the replacement program is going well, is progressing faster than necessary, and that lead levels in households with service lines have decreased since it began.
However, the Denver Water reports do not say which neighborhoods were targeted for the replacement program first, and state health officials would not publish address-specific data collected by the utility company.
The program isn’t going fast enough for Laura O’Brien, who said the utility officials around her home in Chaffee Park were replacing service lines but skipping her street. She first expressed concern in late 2019 after blood tests on her then two-year-old son showed elevated levels of lead. She drank unfiltered water during pregnancy and made formulas from it.
While residents like O’Brien wait for crews to replace their lead lines, the utility company balances the acidity of the water to reduce the amount of metal breakage from the lines that can get into tap water. More than 100,000 households also received water jugs and filters last year, and Denver Water will ship more every six months until the plumbing is replaced.
O’Brien said she was frustrated with her house being passed over but has since agreed that it will be some time before it is her time.
“Basically, I just accepted that I was going to use a filter,” said O’Brien.
Eric Lutzens, The Denver Post
Denver Water Pipeline / Leitmann Miguel Zarco throws an old lead water pipe from the bottom of a hole onto the grass. The Denver Water crew replaced an old water meter, main faucet, and 1927 line that led to a house on Block 1400 of Eudora St. in Denver on Thursday, June 10, 2021.
Why did we use lead?
Lead: It’s soft, malleable, not too difficult to find, not too expensive, holds up well under pressure, and has been used to transport water for millennia. Even the word “plumber” is derived from the Latin word for lead – lead.
Historians also theorize that the metal poisoned the ancient Romans, just as it poisoned Americans in Flint, Michigan several years ago.
“We didn’t know lead was a problem in a long time,” said Glenn Patterson, professor of environmental and occupational safety at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus.
Scientists even found elevated levels of lead in a lock of Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair, which may explain some of his numbness, irritability, gastrointestinal problems and awkward gait, Patterson said.
Scientists didn’t pay much attention to the link between drinking water and public health until a cholera epidemic in Europe in the mid-19th century, Patterson said, although there had been reports of cloudy water in Greek and Roman drinking water long before that.
It would be decades before scientists and the public fully understood how harmful lead is; By the mid-20th century, the metal was still everywhere – in gasoline, in paint, and of course in the pipes that carried water to homes in America
“Most of the older cities in the United States that developed on the East Coast and the Midwest built their public water infrastructure and used a lot of lead in the mid-19th through early 20th centuries,” Patterson said.
During World War II, Denver began moving away from installing lead in favor of galvanized steel or copper tubing, albeit with lead brazing, according to Alexis Woodrow, director of the utility’s lead reduction program. The city officially banned the use of lead lines in 1971, well before a federal ban in 1986.
But much of the damage was already done. Utilities spokesman Travis Thompson said the Denver Water service area of between 64,000 and 84,000 households has been left with leading utilities.
In the early 1990s, the federal government passed the Lead and Copper Rule, which set the acceptable amount of lead in drinking water at 15 parts per billion (ppb). Patterson noted, however, that the metal is not really safe in any amount. The body stores it in bones, blood, and other tissues.
Symptoms of lead exposure include constipation, headache, irritability, loss of appetite, and fatigue, according to the Mayo Clinic. The metal can also damage the nervous system, leading to memory loss and brain damage.
It can be fatal if exposed to high levels. A 2018 study by The Lancet Public Health estimated that up to 412,000 deaths in the United States could be linked to lead contamination each year, particularly those related to cardiovascular health.
Andy Cross, The Denver Post
A view of a cut out section of a lead aqueduct removed by a Denver Water crew along Ellsworth Ave between Broadway and Lincoln St. in Denver on December 19, 2019.
Monitoring levels
Denver Water began testing homes known to have lead pipes in the 1990s to see if particles of the heavy metal showed up in tap water, Thompson said.
“Water is inherently corrosive,” says Thompson. “If you’ve ever left a rake or garden tool in the rain, you know it will rust. The same thing happens with pipes. “
For years, the values in households with lead connections remained below the federal limit of 15 ppb. During this time, the utility replaced around 1,200 service lines each year by piggybacking on existing construction projects, for example when crews replacing water pipes or tearing up roads found lead lines.
But the 2012 test results sparked a greater sense of urgency and a battle between Denver Water and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. About 13% of the tap water samples taken this year were tested above the federal limit of 15 ppb – some even up to 57 ppb. Even more tests showed lead levels between 7 ppb and 13 ppb, with some households – less than 10% – testing above 15 ppb.
The state health agency ordered the utility in 2018 to slow down corrosion with orthophosphate, a chemical that reacts to lead and forms a crust that prevents the metal from breaking off in water. However, Jim Lochhead, CEO of Denver Water, declined, arguing that the chemical would harm downstream communities and the environment.
Lochhead decided to further adjust the pH of the utility’s water supply, creating a protective film in the pipes. The utility also sent out jugs and water filters with packets of information on how to avoid the use of lead.
But adjusting water chemistry and shipping filters is just a patch, said John Adgate, director of environmental and occupational medicine at CU Anschutz.
“Ultimately, you want low-lead and lead-free tubing,” said Adgate.
In late 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved Denver Water’s replacement plan on a trial basis. The idea is to plan and replace all leading service lines in the city within 15 years and at an estimated cost of around $ 500 million.
For the first three years of the program, the EPA requires that Denver Water replace an average of 7% each year, run a public awareness and education program, and have reduced lead levels in drinking water. If the utility achieves its goals, it is eligible to extend this test permit for the remaining 12 years of its plan.
Last year, the utility replaced more than 5,200 lines, well above its target of 4,477, Thompson said. Areas with a higher population of children and pregnant women also have priority.
Eric Lutzens, The Denver Post
Denver Water Pipeline / Head Miguel Zarco connects the connections of the new water pipeline leading to the meter. The Denver Water crew replaced an old water meter, main faucet, and 1927 line that led to a house on Block 1400 of Eudora St. in Denver on Thursday, June 10, 2021.
How can we be sure that it will work?
Average lead levels in Denver water appear to be decreasing, according to the utility company’s quarterly reports. In 2019, 10% of households with lead hookups had lead concentrations above 12 ppb, Woodrow said. By the end of 2020, that value had shrunk to 4.1 ppb.
At the same time, 41 homes tested last year had water containing more than 25 ppb lead, the utility company’s quarterly reports show. And water on one property (location not provided) was tested for up to 2,415 ppb lead.
“Whoa,” said Patterson. “You shouldn’t drink this water.” At least not without a filter that removes 99.9% lead.
Not everyone uses one: Of the Denver Water customers surveyed, 93% use their filter or bottled water to drink, and 97% do the same to make baby formula.
But only 68% use filtered or bottled water for cooking, which Woodrow says is too low, especially for absorbent foods like beans and rice, which require filtered or bottled water to be considered safe.
Customers can look up their addresses on the Denver Water website to see if they have access lines. You can also ask the utility to test their water to see if the lead is high. But otherwise there isn’t much else to do other than be patient and follow the advice of the utility.
“With the anti-corrosive, filters, and long-term replacements, they’re doing a pretty good job with the situation they’re in,” Patterson said. “As long as customers can use these filters in the meantime.”
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