It’s “not possible” to pin down exactly when lead started dissolving from pipes and into Newark’s water because of possible inconsistencies in testing, according to a city-commissioned report.
Rebecca Panico reports for TAPinto Newark:
The city had CDM Smith, an Edison-based engineering firm, investigate what was causing elevated levels after Newark received its first notice of noncompliance from the state in 2017. Preliminary results from the 143-page study were received by officials last month and prompted the city todistribute lead filters.
The report mirrors what Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has been telling reporters and residents. City officials onOct. 12 held a press conference to announce what the report had found, but the mayor was unsure when the chemical that is used to prevent lead from dissolving in pipes had stopped working.
The reason?
It could have simply been that the water wasn’t running long enough when samples were taken over the years, the report says. Or maybe the homes that were selected for testing in the last 20 years didn’t have lead service lines. The report also says samples did not proportionally represent areas served by the city’s two different water supplies.
An environmental advocacy group known as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is suing the city and state Department of Environmental Protection over elevated levels of lead. The NRDC today said the findings in the city’s report validate its claims — that Newark wasn’t properly monitoring residents’ water from the start.
“CDM Smith’s report shows that, if the City of Newark was unaware of the lead problem, it was because of the City’s own failure to properly monitor lead in Newark’s drinking water, as required by federal law. We agree,” said Claire Woods, an attorney with the NRDC. “As alleged in our complaint, Newark failed to take the required number of samples from ‘Tier 1’ homes that were and are most at risk for lead—homes with lead service lines or lead in their plumbing—in violation of the Lead and Copper Rule.”
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Baraka pinned the NRDC as an outsider seeking to regulate the city’s water. The NRDC is headquartered in New York City and has offices in California, so the mayor referenced the group’s West Coast location during a Thursday press conference.
“We should not give an outside agency – by the way, who we do not know that came from California – to manage or to tell us what we need to do or not do as a result as it to our water,” Baraka said.
“In fact, we have a regulatory agency…It’s called the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the other one is called the EPA, the national EPA. And they have provided sufficient oversight and we’ve done everything — in fact we’ve done more than what they asked us to do.”
While the city has been reeling from the results of the CDM Smith study, a new violation cropped up. State records that were firstreported by NJ Advance Media show that high levels of haloacetic acids were found. The chemical could possibly cause cancer when exposed to it over long periods of time.
FIRST DRAW SAMPLES
The report says that even if samples of water were taken correctly under the guidelines of the Lead and Copper Rule — a federal regulation that limits the concentration of lead in drinking water to 15 parts per billion — it may not have shown the problem.
“True lead levels are not always reflected in compliance sampling for the [Lead and Copper Rule] and an underlying issue may have been developing without Newark’s knowledge,” the report says.
It’s just that “first draw” samples that were taken may not have indicated there was a problem, according to the report. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency requires that first draw samples of drinking water be taken after no one has turned on a faucet for at least eight hours. Water is collected in a 1-liter container immediately after opening a faucet or valve.
“This sample only represents the water closest to the faucet (typically the first 10-20 feet of the premise plumbing), whereas the stagnant water in the lead piping may not be drawn until much later, depending on the layout of the home plumbing,” the report states.
If high levels of lead do not show up in that initial sample, no further samples are required, the EPA requirements say.
Volunteer customers — or individual residents — collect samples, according to EPA guidelines, the CDM Smith report and the state DEP spokesman. Mistakes that are made by customers could cause false positives or negatives, which is why at least 10 percent of samples need to exceed 15 parts per billion before the state issues a notice of non-compliance.
State DEP spokesman Lawrence Hajna explained that volunteers for sampling are generally chosen after a water system does a “material evaluation” to determine which area is most likely to have old plumbing. Letters are then sent out to property owners in those areas asking for volunteers.
“First, they have to do a material evaluation determining which housing units are likely to have a lead issue,” Hajna said. “So those with lead service lines, or those with older plumbing, where they have a pretty good idea that they used lead soldering, copper pipes — that kind of thing.”
Newark Water and Sewer Utilities Deputy Director Kareem Adeem said the city has begun to do more widespread testing as well. Any resident who wants their water tested can get it done at no cost by asking the city to do so.
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