Lead threat: How communities are responding

Zero.

That is the only acceptably safe level of lead in parts per billion (ppb) that should exist in our drinking water. Yet, the federal action level threshold for lead in drinking water is 15 ppb.

At the height of the 2015 Flint water crisis, the residents living there were using water that contained lead levels as high as 13,200 ppb.

Elin Warn Betanzo of Franklin had 16 years under her belt working on water safety issues in Washington, D.C., including her work in at the EPA conducting studies on local children who were exposed to lead in their drinking water. Now the founding principal engineer of Royal Oak-based Safe Water Engineering, LLC, Betanzo helped uncover the Flint Water crisis and considers herself a “stakeholder” in Michigan’s revved-up 2018 Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) – part of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act that will drop the action threshold for lead to 12 ppb by 2025 and mandate the removal of all lead service lines (LSLs) – the pipes that connect a home to the city’s water main, as well as the lead soldered pipe fixtures and plumbing lines in the state by 2041.

Twenty-one years may seem a long way off to meet a deadline for removing pipes, but environmental and municipal officials explain vast infrastructure projects take planning and budgeting time.

According to Great Lakes Environmental Law Center Executive Director Nick Leonard, the 2041 deadline for LSL removal is largely a product of two factors: cost and lack of knowledge about where lead service lines exist. Regarding costs, Leonard said the rough estimate is that the removal of each service line costs $5,000, but can go as high as $10,000 in some areas where private homes are set far back from a municipality's main line. Michigan rules require public water systems to pay for this in its entirety.

“That's great, but it can also mean that water systems have to charge more in rates for water service to cover the costs. Giving water systems 20 years means they can spread this cost over a longer period, which should help prevent large increases in water rates. Regarding knowledge of the location of the pipes, many water system authorities simply don't know where lead service lines are,” Leonard said.

The good news is that our water sources are safe, according to Michigan's Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) officials. The trouble begins when municipal water collects particles as it moves through lead pipes found in older public municipal systems, pipes that have been soldered with lead, and lead faucets and fixtures.

In October 2014, under the authority of an emergency city management council, Flint switched its water supply from the Detroit water system to a system based in the Flint River and stopped treating the water with anti-corrosive chemicals in order to save money.

Betanzo said it was not until the spring of 2015 that state and federal officials began sampling water in Flint. But sampling from only the first liter of water in homes – which is not highly susceptible to lead exposure – distorted the findings and minimized the severity of the situation. Flint residents, therefore, were continually told the water was fine to use.

“What happened in Flint made it obvious that the federal lead and copper rule was not providing the drinking water protection that people needed,” said Betanzo. “True detection of lead-contaminated tap water can only be captured from the fifth … or even seventh-liter sample. So that's why (the Flint emergency management council) was able to cover up what was happening for quite some time. It was not until Marc Edwards, (a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech University) came in and did additional sampling did we finally see the most concerning levels of lead. That is because the contaminants were originating from pipes outside the homes from a lead service line.”

Four years into one of the largest water infrastructure projects in the nation, Flint expects to remove its last lead pipe by the end of 2020. The project cost an estimated $55 million to replace all the lead pipes in the city. But lasting, damaging health effects on Flint’s children remain.

Though exposure to lead in Oakland County may not be as dire as what happened in Flint, Betanzo cautions that water authorities and residents here should take a lesson and think hard about the lead that still exists in the infrastructure that sourced water traverses to get to their taps.

In a hard-earned lesson from the nation’s most botched and deadly mismanagement of a municipal water system, Governor Rick Snyder in the summer of 2018 through the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), now known as the Michigan Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE), introduced a multi-pronged approach to ridding the state of lead in water. In addition to lowering the lead action threshold by 2025, the LCR mandated that starting in 2019, municipalities begin targeted testing for lead, compile an inventory of estimated and known pipes within their jurisdiction, called a Distribution System Materials Inventory (DSMI), to EGLE. The first DSMI was due in January 2020, with the next due in January 2025, with subsequent updates every five years.

The 2018 LCR mandates that all inventoried lead service lines will all have to be removed at a rate of five percent per year until 2041. If the lead in water exceeds the action level, communities must increase the rate of replacing lead lines to seven percent a year.

As a show of transparency, tests and inventory taking are made available to the public through EGLE, water authority and municipal websites, and other communication channels.

This information, as well as consistent messaging to the public about how to prevent lead exposure, is provided by the guidance of another mandate of the LCL: statewide and municipal water systems advisory councils (WSAC) for populations exceeding 50,000.

As the communications arm of the LCR, it was mandated that the state form a Water System Advisory Council (WSAC) to provide consistent messaging and information across municipalities to help the water customers become more aware of lead in drinking water and the associated health risks. Water systems that serve a population greater than 50,000 are required to create a WSAC.

Retired water engineer Keith McCormack presided over the first year of the statewide WSAC and helped to establish advisory councils in 36 municipalities in Michigan. WSACs are comprised of volunteers with backgrounds ranging from public works administrators, medical professionals, public health educators and engineers. It also keeps municipalities and water authorities on compliance track by reminding them of upcoming deadlines. After a year in operation – mostly meeting virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic and the news of PFAS contamination in source waters, McCormack said the concern about lead has somewhat slipped from the public’s eye. Going forward, he said the biggest challenge will be keeping lead safety in the spotlight by posting updates and educational information on websites to mailing fact sheets in water bills.

“After doing this for a year, the biggest challenge that lies ahead is getting the information out to the public,” said McCormack, “After all the attention lead got because of Flint, who could have imagined it would not be the main topic in the last year because of source waters getting tainted from PFAS compounds and the pandemic? It is the job of the advisory councils to keep informing the public and keep raising awareness about the issue.”

With all the talk about lead, many are surprised that copper is lumped into the same law.

Lead in the body is unsafe at any level, especially to children, infants, and pregnant women, but copper is an essential nutrient at acceptable levels, except in infants or those with Wilson’s disease, a genetic disease where copper builds up in the body.

Scott Dean, strategic communications advisor for EGLE, said the federal LCR is designed to limit the corrosivity of drinking water in general. Also, there is no mandate in the LCR to remove copper pipes. Lead removal is where all the focus is.

“Copper remains an approved and preferred plumbing material so the rule does not target copper pipes for removal,” said Dean.

Ultimately, the 2018 changes to the Michigan LCR aim to build back the public’s hard-earned trust in the water that comes out of their tap.

A 2016 American Water Works Association study estimated that there are 460,000 lead service lines in Michigan. Malleable enough to bend and withstand Michigan’s temperature swings without bursting or requiring joint components, lead reigned as the plumbing material of choice through the 1950s. And thanks to decades of spotty record keeping, it’s anybody’s guess exactly where the lines are located.

Complying to Michigan's strictest lead and copper rule will now be a very tall glass of water.

Some municipalities and water authorities, viewing the new state ruling as an unfunded mandate, tried unsuccessfully to challenge the ruling in court when it was instituted. The Michigan Supreme Court decades ago, under the Headlee Tax Limitation Amendment to the state Constitution, had ruled mandates had to be underwritten by the state.

When it comes to regaining the public trust in the water they drink, water authority and municipal officials understand that the issue of removing lead pipes has moved to the forefront of the public mindset after Flint. However, some cash strapped municipalities and the Oakland County Water Resources Commission (WCR) that manages water systems balked at the possibility of putting the cost of compliance on the backs of populations already suffering from high water rates. Others argued that lowering the action level threshold by three ppb is something not set by science.

University of Detroit Law Professor Nick Schroeck said that the new state LCR has made “baby steps” in reducing the action threshold by three ppb.

“It is true that Michigan’s LCR standards are the toughest in the nation, but there is no safe level of lead,” said Schroeck. “There must be a complete removal of all lead piping soldering and fixtures. After Flint, we see that we really need to see people protected long term. Even if you have anti-corrosion in the treated water, it is still taking a chance with lead contamination. As long as these lead pipes are in the ground, it still poses a risk.”

Schroeck added that Michigan’s lead problem did not “spring out of nowhere,” and that municipalities should have been working on getting the lead out for decades. Still, the relatively rapid acceleration of putting the law into place to pay for the removal and replacement of the LSLs – which can cost between $5,000 to 10,000 per pipe – may put a financial strain on municipalities and water rate consumers alike.

“The Flint water crisis shone a huge light on this problem and now the new LCR is telling the state ‘let’s hurry up and get this done and over with.’ The problem is at the municipality level, there are already so many budget restraints and many residents feel their water bills are high enough,” Schroeck said. “To add more water surcharges or hike water rates would be tough to folks who already cannot afford their water bills.”

In the past, a municipality would remove a lead pipe that was part of the public utility but leave in place the lead lines that ran from the easement in the public road to the homeowner’s water meter. Schroeck said these incomplete removal practices put the homeowner at an even greater risk of exposure to lead as remnants of that removed and disturbed lead pipe or solder could break off and find its way into homes.

“Most people do not have the resources to replace that line from the foundation of their home to the street,” said Schroeck. “There is a need for more grant money and support for municipal water utilities to be able to thoroughly do this work.”

Many cash-strapped municipalities were eager to remove all the lead pipes in their systems but questioned the ruling’s constitutionality. They also feared the potential litigation of using public funds to replace LSLS on private property.

That is why in August 2018, the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), which provides drinking water to much of southeast Michigan, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), and the Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner (WRC) filed a request for a declaratory ruling with the DEQ. The DEQ in October 2018 denied the request. The plaintiffs appealed and brought the case to the state Court of Claims, which subsequently dismissed the case in July 2019.

Communities that signed on to the challenge include Bloomfield Township and Bloomfield Hills, as well as Allen Park, Bay City, Beverly Hills, Bingham Farms, Boyne City, Brownstown Township, Canton, Center Line, Claire, Clawson, Clinton Township, Dearborn, Detroit, Douglas, Elk Rapids, Farmington, Ferndale, Gibraltar, Gladstone, Grosse Pointe, Grosse Pointe Woods, Hamtramck, Hart, Hazel Park, Huntington Woods, Huron Township, Inkster, Jackson, Jonesville, Kingsley, Lake Orion, Lapeer, Lincoln Park, Livonia, Montague, North Muskegon, Northville, Oak Park, Plymouth, Riverview, Rochester, Rochester Hills, Romulus, Rogers City, Royal Oak, Saginaw, the Southeastern Oakland Water Authority (SOCWA), Sumpter Township, Taylor, Warren, Wayne, and Westland.

The Michigan Court of Claims dismissed the case because the court ruled that the water suppliers’ complaints regarding the rule-making process reflected more discontent with the eventual rules that were implemented, more than a flawed procedure to arrive at the rules. Also, the court stated there are no rules that prohibit the state from working on mixed public and private service lines.

According to Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash, one of the leading voices in the lawsuit, lowering the lead action threshold to 12 ppb was not based on science. Although the challenge was denied, Nash said the WRC will not file for an appeal. He is somewhat pleased that EGLE established some grant funding for LCR compliance beginning this fall.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer in March of 2019 estimated that fulfilling the LCR by 2041 will cost a total of $2.5 billion. Some funding relief came in October 2020 when Whitmer announced the MI Clean Water Plan, providing $500 million to improve Michigan’s water infrastructure. The funding included the $37.5 million Lead and Copper Drinking Water Asset Management Grant, offering municipalities up to $1 million in funding. Fifteen million dollars will be set aside to serve municipalities with populations serving 10,000 or less. Applicants must be in good standing with EGLE and grant funding is restricted to asset management program updates or DMSI related activities.

“It's a good start,” said Nash. “But unless we keep going, we're still going to have to hit people with rate increases. In communities like Pontiac, 35 percent of the people live under the water affordability rate as set by the EPA. Only two percent of your income should go to pay for water. If we have to raise water rates in Pontiac (and other communities), it’s going to harm them.”

Nash said the work to remove pipes in the municipalities under WRC management is already underway and will continue into 2025 and beyond. Though some testing and removal has slowed due to the pandemic, Nash is confident to be on or ahead of schedule in cities like Pontiac. While residents wait for lead pipe removal, he said it is crucial to simultaneously educate residents on how to properly use their water if lead was detected, such as flushing pipes with cool water before using, and never using hot tap water for cooking.

Nash said sampling and inventory conducted through 2019 revealed that Pontiac had 8,000 lead service lines. The entire project, expected to take 20 years, will cost between $45 and $60 million. The WRC applied for $8.97 million in grant funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help replace 1,160 lead service lines from 2021 through 2024 at a cost of $9.97 million. This four-year project will impact 3,500 to 4,000 Pontiac residents. Nash said there are enough funds within the Pontiac municipal system to cover costs for now, but Pontiac water rates may have to be raised come 2024.

Other municipalities are already taking advantage of the new grant money. According to Kaitlyn Thrush, analyst at EGLE, the city of Auburn Hills applied for a grant amount of $180,000. The Byron-Gaines Utility Authority applied for a grant amount of $192,350.

In September 2019, Birmingham collected samples from 32 sites with known lead service leads out of approximately 8,870 total water customers in the city. Of the 8,870 water customers there are approximately six percent (roughly 550 customers) with lead service lines. Five of the 32 sites tested exceeded the action level of 15 ppb.

In early 2020, Birmingham submitted its DMSI to EGLE and updated its numbers, reporting that 730 out of nearly 9,000 residential water customers had a portion of either public, private or both of their service lines containing lead material.

To quell the concern of residents after the 2019 findings, the city boosted communications and transparency efforts. It had a town hall meeting with EGLE officials and on its website residents can use an interactive database to see if any lead service lines are near their address.

According to Birmingham City Manager Joe Valentine, the city is well ahead of schedule in meeting the state-mandated deadline for replacing its LSLs. Valentine also noted that many lead service lines were removed during the city’s Old Woodward and Maple Road reconstruction projects.

Regarding further testing, Valentine said the city is working with contractor HydroCorp and has concluded sampling water in more than 700 homes serviced by lead service lines. By the end of November, he said 73 more homes will be tested. Overall, Valentine said Birmingham plans to be ahead of schedule with LCR compliance and hopes to complete the entire project in five to seven years.

“We are in a position that we have the resources to do this ahead of schedule,” said Valentine. “We realize this is a priority to the community and expect to have our lead lines removed far ahead of the 2041 deadline.”

Bloomfield Township Director of Public Works Noah Mehalski said the township in 2019 reported 13 lead service lines and estimated that it will cost an average of $10,000 to remove and replace each line as well as resurface the affected properties. But he said residents should not be worried about water rate hikes to pay for compliance, even with lead lines that fall on private property. This cost was placed in the township’s operational budget, and at this time, the township will not apply for grant funding.

After two rounds of sampling in 2019, there was no detection of lead action levels, and another round of samples to additional households commenced in late November.

When asked to inspect water lines or take a water sampling, Mehalski said township residents were happy to cooperate.

“After Flint, residents are more than willing to have their water and pipes tested for lead.”

Mehalski said he agreed with the challenge to the LCR.

“We agreed with the lawsuit. We wanted the question asked before a court, where is the dividing line between public and private responsibility, We wanted to stand in solidarity with larger, poorer cities like Livonia and Pontiac, which have a far larger lead problem and with less budget to pay for testing and removal. Bloomfield will be using operational funds and the cost for us will be so small. We do not see a need to raise rates or apply for grant funding.”

Aaron Filipski, director of the Department of Public Service for the city of Royal Oak, said he applied for $1 million in DWAM funding after the city identified approximately 1,400 lines containing lead out of a total of 23,741 water service lines in its initial DMSI. Also in October 2019, Royal Oak sampled water from 30 sites with known lead service lines and concluded that eight of the 30 tested exceeded concentration levels of 15 ppb. Because of last year’s lead exceedance, the city has already removed 108 lead service lines, ahead of schedule of the required removal of five percent of a municipalities LSLs per year.

Filipski said the city had no opposition to remove the LSLs but the sudden nature of the mandate “came as a shock.”

“As far as staying in compliance, we have been since the LCR was updated,” said Filipski. “But to stay in compliance, it has taken away funds that would have been used for other projects and infrastructure improvements. While we are certainly anxious about getting all the lead out, the mandate was a little bit of a sudden shock. It was as if EGLE was saying, ‘We are going to tell you to remove all the lead service lines, we are just not telling you how to fund it.’ So that is why there was opposition as demonstrated by the lawsuit challenge. Now, we are pleased that EGLE has worked out some grant programs to fund our compliance efforts.”

The city of Ferndale estimates that 30 percent, or 3,000 of its 10,031 service connection lines, are constructed with lead or lead-containing materials. Ferndale in October 2020 reported it collected samples from 31 properties with known lead services lines and five had lead levels above 15 ppb. In response to these results, Ferndale will increase both the frequency of monitoring and the number of sites tested. This additional information will provide important data for state and city officials to determine what additional actions may be required to bring the 90th percentile value below 15 ppb.

Ferndale is also working its way through building the DMSI and expects to replace seven percent of lead service lines per year beginning in March 2021.

To offer more transparency about lead, the city launched an online interactive map that is part of the nationwide map created by National Public Radio that allows residents to learn the location of inventoried lead and lead soldered pipes searchable by address. The map is being built by the city’s meter replacement program. There is also an online materials identification and reporting form that instructs residents how to identify if they have lead pipes by using a coin and a magnet.

In 2019, the West Bloomfield Water Utilities Department reported that a total of 11,085 out of 18,830 service leads on private property are comprised of unknown materials.

Ed Haapala is West Bloomfield utilities director and heads the township’s water system advisory council. His township is comprised of newer subdivisions but also contains older lake cottages, farmhouses and other older structures that were built in the age of lead plumbing. Haapala had hoped to inspect 500 homes this year for lead, but because of COVID, his team was only able to inspect 125 homes.

While Haapala understands the importance of removing lead pipes, the LCR is unclear as to why municipalities need to pay for removal and replacement of LSLs that fall on private property.

“In the past, there was nothing as a township we could do about lead lines that lead from someone’s water meter to the main utility line,” he said. “But if one suspected they had a lead line, we could leave educational pamphlets and literature to educate the customer about the harmful effects of lead. Now, we are charged with removing that lead line at the municipality’s expense, not the homeowner’s expense. The municipal utilities are under the belief that the LCR is an illicit subsidization of public funds.”

This story ends where it begins, with a concern for levels of lead in water, especially knowing the damage lead exceedance at any level poses to children. For all the intricacies in the revised LCR for municipalities, it does not cover lead testing or lead remediation in schools.

Schools do not fall under the jurisdiction of municipal water authorities. According to EGLE, sampling for lead or other possible drinking water contaminants is not currently required for schools served by a community water system.

EGLE has taken the initiative to provide guidance and tools regarding communication, plumbing assessments, sampling plans and collection, interpretation of results, risk reduction actions, and water programs for school personnel.

In July of 2020, the U.S. EPA awarded EGLE a $1.9 million grant for lead testing of drinking water at schools and child care facilities across the state. EGLE has partnered with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and prioritized the funding toward the protection of children in areas where blood lead levels in the state were higher, and where schools were unable to pay for testing. The funding is expected to last until 2023.

What is now most concerning is the state of our school buildings as they sit dormant and shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic and water is not flowing regularly in them.

The Bloomfield Hills School district kept all water fountains closed when the buildings were open to staff and students. BHS participates in the state’s School Drinking Water Quality Reimbursement Program, which is a program jointly administered by the Michigan Department of Education and EGLE. Testing for lead was last conducted in the summer of 2017 by the Detroit Water Authority, according to Brian Goby, director of physical plant services for Bloomfield Hills Schools. Most water testing came back "normal" with no action required or cause for concern. The few water fixtures and fountains that had lead action levels that exceeded 15 ppb, such as a water fountain at West Hills Middle School that tested at 30ppb, and a water fountain at the Lahser building, at 36 ppb, were removed and replaced.

“After that, we had everything retested and all tests came back clean,” said Goby. ”Now, because of COVID, we are flushing our pipes on a regular basis, even if no one is in the buildings. We may go back to a random sampling of lead, but with the buildings mostly using filtered water fountains with the latest bottle refill technology, we do not expect a problem.” Normally, when schools are filled with people, pipes get flushed with regular use. But the sporadic, on-again, off-again nature of face-to-face learning this year has caused water to languish in unused pipes.

This raises not only the potential for elevated levels of lead or copper, but also potential outbreaks of legionella.

In November, Birmingham Public Schools took proactive steps in preventing and testing for legionella after the microbe was detected in both the district’s high school buildings. Emails went out to all student families in the district saying that all high school and middle school locker room showers had been shut and, when in-person school was still in session, all were encouraged to bring drinking water from home.

According to Anne Cron, Birmingham Schools spokeswoman, testing is now being conducted at Pierce, Quarton, Pembroke, Beverly, and Harlan elementary schools.

Though legionella was detected at Groves and Seaholm high schools while students were in attendance, all school water fountains have been shut since COVID. Cron said students either brought water from home or drank water supplied by the school from water bottles, and the water was safe to use for hand washing “to maintain good hygiene to mitigate COVID spread.”

“We will flush our pipes and retest,” said Cron. “If testing continues to show issues, we’ll treat with a biocide. Then we repeat this process until it is remediated. We are working with local water experts for guidance.”