New York City has over 124,000 buildings with lead pipes, city data analyzed by the New York League of Conservation Voters shows. Here's how to look up your address.
Screenshot/New York League of Conservation Voters
A screenshot of the New York League of Conservation Voters' new map showing homes believed to have lead utility lines.
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The environmental group New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV) released a map and report Monday that uses city data to help New Yorkers figure out whether the pipes that carry drinking water to their homes are made of lead.
Constant exposure to lead can lead to hearing problems, reduced IQ, learning difficulties and hyperactivity. The substance can also slow a child's development.
One in six New Yorkers, or an estimated 1.3 million people, could be drinking water piped through a lead pipe or possibly a lead pipe, according to a new study from NYLCV.
Their map shows that nearly 30 percent of the city's utility lines — the section of pipe that connects a building to the street's underground water supply — are or may be made of lead. In total, that's more than 124,000 buildings with guaranteed mains connections and another nearly 125,000 buildings that may have them, although city records have yet to confirm their presence.
Screenshot/New York League of Conservation Voters
A screenshot of the map for the Ridgewood neighborhood.
New Yorkers can use the magnifying glass icon in the right corner of the map to look up their address, or zoom in on their street to see who else has it on their block. When you zoom out to the citywide view, the map shows in white where lead pipe hotspots are concentrated and in purple where they are least common.
Until 1961, New York authorities permitted the manufacture of lead utility lines. And because they are robust, their use has often been recommended or even mandated.
But over time, the pipes corrode and when pieces break off, the lead can leach into the drinking water. Now government authorities know that there is no safe limit for lead exposure.
“We are most concerned about lead in the brain because brain cells appear to be a critical organ in terms of sensitivity, particularly during periods of rapid development, and that is early childhood,” said Dr. Morri Markowitz, lead poisoning prevention and treatment program manager at Montefiore Children's Hospital.
To avoid contamination, New York City authorities recommend using cold water when cooking, drinking or preparing infant formula, as hot water is more likely to contain lead. They also encourage people to remove and clean the strainer attached to their faucet monthly and hire a licensed plumber to identify and replace any pipes that contain lead.
Officials say “extensive steps” have already been taken to protect the water supply in people's homes, including adding food-grade phosphoric acid to create a protective film in pipes “that reduces the release of metals into the water.” , the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) says.
NYCDEP
The NYLCV hopes its map will also help spread the word.
“We want to make sure that anyone who lives in a building with a possible lead pipe is aware of it so they can take all of these simple precautions to protect themselves,” said Josh Klainberg, senior vice president of the NYLCV.
The problem of finding pipes
To find out if lead is present in drinking water, residents can request a free lead test kit by calling 311 or filling out the form linked here (select “Lead Test Kit” from the drop-down menu). Here's how to use the test kit once you receive it.
However, only one kit per household is allowed, and they take a while to be mailed, the DEP warns, “due to the high volume” of requests.
Experts also warn that a water test is not always enough to ensure that a building has a mains service. Exposure only occurs if the water has been in the pipe for more than eight hours. So if the water is tested when no exposure has occurred, it may not detect high levels of lead.
“The best way to do it [confirm the presence of a lead pipe] wouldn't pass a water test. This would be done through a physical or visual inspection,” Klainberg said.
However, inspecting the pipes proved to be a challenge. The service line is considered private property, meaning water utilities do not have the right to inspect the pipes in people's homes. Water utilities are actively trying to find lead pipes by contacting consumers. However, they rely on the customer's willingness to let them in, which doesn't always work, according to experts in the field.
“During the day everyone is out of the house, no one is at home. We leave cards. They are ignored,” said Judith Hansen, former superintendent of the Kingston Water Department and consultant to the New York branch of the American Water Works Association.
One way to solve this problem, Hansen said, is to pass the statewide Find Lead Pipes Faster Act, a law that gives water utilities the right to inspect pipes.
Jean Marie Evely
“That would leave some teeth [our ability to carry out inspections] and actually give us the right to get in there,” Hansen said. “It would make it more even and forgiving [water providers] the right to all water systems throughout the state.”
Inspecting more pipes would provide a more comprehensive inventory of how many main service lines exist in the city. Currently, the DEP warns that it cannot “guarantee the accuracy or completeness” of public data revealing its location.
To paint a picture of what's out there, the agency says it relies primarily on historical city records archived by licensed plumbers, observations made while reading water meters, and data that other authorities have collected during excavations. In addition, predictive analytics are used to determine when there is a high probability that a building will contain a lead pipe.
NYLCV's map uses the same data, but provides a citywide overview of the location of hotspots and offers various filters so users can isolate the numbers by county, neighborhood, or even by federal, state and city district.
The environmental group plans to continue updating the map as new information about the whereabouts of lead pipes becomes available online.
New addresses are sure to pop up as the Lead Pipe Right to Know Act, enacted last year, codified requirements for lead service pipe inventories across the state. The more lead pipes are exposed, the easier it will be for politicians to overcome the enormous hurdle of replacing them.
According to the NYLCV report, DEP estimates that 150,000 lead pipes will need to be replaced when the pipe inventory is completed and that the replacement will cost $2 billion.
And they must replace them: Last month, a federal rule, in the works since the 1990s, was passed that will require all cities across the country to identify and replace lead pipes within the next decade. Water utilities must also send consumers with known conductive services a letter informing them that these pipes are in their homes.
Last month, Mayor Eric Adams announced that $48 million in grants, provided in part through the Biden-Harris administration's bipartisan infrastructure bill, would help fund a program to replace private lines in low-income neighborhoods.
But there is still a lot of work to be done, warns NYLCV's Klainberg.
“There is a federal mandate that all pipes must be removed, but there is no mandate for the city to do anything with anyone’s private property,” he said.
“Another purpose of this map is to help educate our partners in government, particularly the City Council, so they can pass a bill to create a lead utility removal program.”
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