Tag Archives: Water

Flint children’s blood lead levels rose in water crisis: U.S. officials

Water fountain in a school near Flint, Michigan

DETROIT (Reuters) – Federal health officials on Friday confirmed that the blood lead levels of children in Flint, Michigan, rose after the city switched to the Flint River as the source of its drinking water, exposing residents to dangerously high contamination.

Flint, with a population of about 100,000, was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager in 2014 when it switched its water source to the river from Detroit’s municipal system to save money. The city switched back in October.

The river water was more corrosive than the Detroit system’s and caused more lead to leach from aging pipes.

Lead can be toxic, and children are especially vulnerable. The crisis has prompted lawsuits by parents who say their children have shown dangerously high levels of lead in their blood.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said on Friday that they found that the percentage of young children with elevated blood lead levels was significantly higher when the water source was the Flint River.

“This crisis was entirely preventable, and a startling reminder of the critical need to eliminate all sources of lead from our children’s environment,” Patrick Breysse, director of the agency’s National Center for Environmental Health, said in a statement.

When the water source was switched back to the Detroit system, the agency said, the percentage of children under 6 years old with elevated blood lead returned to levels seen before the switch.

The agency urged residents to use filters on their faucets to get water for drinking, cooking and brushing teeth. It said regular tap water could be used for bathing and showering because lead is not absorbed into the skin, but young children should not be allowed to drink bath water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday that properly filtered water in Flint was safe to drink. City officials, however, said bottled water was still needed since not every home can use the filters.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

EPA says filtered Flint, Michigan drinking water safe to drink

Flint Michigan Water Tower

DETROIT (Reuters) – Federal officials said on Thursday it is safe for anyone to drink properly filtered water in Flint, Michigan, where a public health crisis erupted after residents were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said in a statement that the most recent testing at nearly 50 locations in the city showed lead levels far below the levels considered dangerous.

But the city’s mayor said some homes in Flint cannot be fitted with filters, so bottled water is still needed.

Flint, with a population of about 100,000, was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager in 2014 when it switched its water source from Detroit’s municipal system to the Flint River to save money. The city switched back in October.

The river water was more corrosive than the Detroit system’s and caused more lead to leach from aging pipes. Lead can be toxic, and children are especially vulnerable. The crisis has prompted lawsuits by parents who say their children have shown dangerously high levels of lead in their blood.

The EPA, which worked in coordination with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the testing, said properly filtered water is safe even for pregnant and nursing women, and children, groups more susceptible to the effects of lead poisoning.

“Residents can be confident that they can use filtered water and protect their developing fetus or young child from lead,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Dr. Nicole Lurie said in a statement. Lurie has led federal support efforts for the Flint crisis.

The EPA said the filters distributed by the state of Michigan effectively remove lead or reduce it to levels well below the level of 15 parts per billion at which federal officials say action is needed. In the testing, nearly all filtered water tested below 1 part per billion. In January, water samples tested above 150 parts per billion.

The state began offering free water filters in Flint in January.

“This good news shows the progress we are making with overall water quality improving in Flint,” Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said in a statement.

Snyder has been criticized for the state’s poor handling of the crisis.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver noted that some homes have faucets where the filters do not fit. “This is not the ultimate solution,” she said in a statement. “We still need new infrastructure, replacing the lead-tainted pipes in the city remains my top priority.”

(Reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by David Gregorio)

Abbas says some Israeli rabbis called for poisoning Palestinian water

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accuses rabbis of poisoning the water

By Robin Emmott and Dan Williams

BRUSSELS/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday accused Israeli rabbis of calling for the poisoning of Palestinian water, in what appeared to be an invocation of a widely debunked media report that recalled a medieval anti-Semitic libel.

Abbas’s remarks, in a speech to the European parliament, did not appear on the official transcript issued by his office, suggesting he may have spoken off the cuff as he condemned Israeli actions against Palestinians amid stalled peace talks.

“Only a week ago, a number of rabbis in Israel announced, and made a clear announcement, demanding that their government poison the water to kill the Palestinians,” Abbas said.

“Isn’t that clear incitement to commit mass killings against the Palestinian people?”

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to the remarks, which were made as Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, made a parallel visit to Brussels.

Rivlin’s office said Abbas had turned down a European proposal that the two meet there. A spokesman for Abbas said any such meeting would require more preparation.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.

Abbas, who received a standing ovation from EU lawmakers after his speech, gave no source for his information — and there has been no evidence over the past week of any call by Israeli rabbis to poison Palestinian water.

MASSACRES

Reports of an alleged rabbinical edict emerged on Sunday, when the Turkish state news agency Anadolu said that a “Rabbi Shlomo Mlma, chairman of the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank settlements”, had issued an advisory to allow Jewish settlers to take such action.

The same day, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, on its website, cited what it said was a water-poisoning call from a “Rabbi Mlmad” and demanded his arrest.

Reuters and other news outlets in Israel could not locate any rabbi named Shlomo Mlma or Mlmad, and there is no listed organization called the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank.

Gulf News, in a report on Sunday, said a number of rabbis had issued the purported advisory. It attributed the allegation to Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization of veteran soldiers critical of the military’s treatment of Palestinians.

A spokesman for Breaking the Silence told Reuters the group had not provided any such information.

For Jews, allegations of water poisoning strike a bitter chord. In the 14th century, as plague swept across Europe, false accusations that Jews were responsible for the disease by deliberately poisoning wells led to massacres of Jewish communities.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta; editing by Ralph Boulton)

drcolbert.monthly

Armed guards protect last water in drought parched Indian city

Cracked soil at Manjara Dam is seen in Osmanabad

By Shuriah Niazi

TIKAMGARH, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Authorities in this drought-parched city in central India have deployed round-the-clock armed guards at a river-fed community reservoir to prevent farmers from siphoning the remaining water for irrigation.

With rainfall in Tikamgarh district this year 52 percent below average – the second dry year for the area – water is now available to city residents only sporadically, with fears even that may run out during the peak heat months of May and June, authorities say.

Forty-seven-year-old Suryakant Tiwari, one city resident, said his family and many others now have drinking and household water supplied only once every five days.

“I have not seen such a condition in my lifetime. Almost every water source in the area has dried up. We don’t know how we will survive,” Tiwari he said.

Farmers have been prohibited from drawing water from reservoirs to irrigate their crops. But Tikamgarh Municipal Corporation officials fear farmers from adjoining Uttar Pradesh state – whose farms border the Bari Ghat dam, fed by the Jumuniya River – are poaching water to try to keep their crops alive.

“If crops continue to be irrigated using the river water, it is not going to last long and there will be severe crisis during the summer season,” warned Laxmi Giri, the Tikamgahr municipal corporation president. “Our priority is to supply drinking water to the people.”

The Jamuniya River is the only source of drinking water for over 100,000 people in Tikamgarh, she said.

But “farmers of the neighboring state try to open the gates of the dam and draw water illegally using pipelines. We’re therefore compelled to deploy guards,” Giri said.

‘NEVER BEEN SO BAD’

Tikamgarh is hardly alone. The drought-ravaged Bundelkhand, a region in central India spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, is suffering some of the worst drought in memory.

Crops in the area have been badly hit, cattle are dying of thirst and lack of grazing, and there are growing fears that even drinking water could run dry before the monsoon is expected to begin in June.

“All the ponds, reservoirs and water bodies which earlier supplied water in areas of Tikamgarh have dried up. With no water available for irrigation, farmers have abandoned their crops and are migrating to nearby urban areas in search of livelihood and for sustenance. Life is really hard for them,” said Rajendra Adhvrayu, a local journalist who writes on water issues in the region.

“The situation has never been so bad,” he added. “This is for the first time that the tussle over water has degenerated into a battle of sorts.  We fear the situation will be grave during the coming months.”

The Jamuniya River separates Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh states along some of its length. A 1974 water sharing pact gives Madhya Pradesh 17 percent of the water stored in the Jamuniya Dam in Uttar Pradesh.

Madhya Pradesh stores its share in five dams, including the Bari Ghat. But this year, water is available only in Bari Ghat dam. Water in the four other dams – Harpura, Charpuva, Madiya and Sudan – has run out.

Giri said authorities in Tikamgarh had shut off the electrical supply to farmers in neighboring Uttar Pradesh to try to prevent pumping of water from the dam for irrigation.

Farmers have instead turned to using diesel pumps to pull water from the reservoir, he said. “The administration has failed to convince them not to draw water illegally from the dam,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Met Department’s prediction that the entire country could be abnormally hot in May and June, with longer and more severe heat waves, has unnerved many people in the Bundelkhand.

India’s weather office has predicted that monsoon rains are likely to be above average this year, a potential source of relief. But the rains, normally due the second week of June, have been regularly delayed in recent years.

Jayant Verma, a resident of Tikamgarh, said moving elsewhere to find water, even temporarily, is not an option for many families.

“My children attend the school here. I have a job here. I can’t go to any other place along with my family. I don’t know what we shall do. The government has failed to provide any relief so far,” he said.

The search for water has become so intense that in many places – including Madhya Pradesh’s Dindori district – children are descending into deep, almost-dry wells to try to fetch what little water is available, residents said.

In some areas of the Bundelkhand, farmers have been unable to sow any crops this year, they said, and animals are at risk.

“Animals are dying without water. We can’t do anything,” said Kanta Prasad, a resident of the Jatara sub-district of Tikamgarh. “If we give water to animals, there’ll be none left for us. We’re feeling so helpless. Every drop of water counts.”

The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan has promised that drinking water will be made available to those who need it. He said the government has prepared a contingency plan to address the worsening drought, and announced a high-level review of the situation in the region.

Residents, meanwhile, can do little but wait for rain, and worry.

“What will happen if the monsoon is delayed?” asked Adhvrayu. “Or it plays truant, as in previous years?”

(Reporting by Shuriah Niazi; editing by Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)

Three Michigan officials charged in Flint Toxic Water crisis

A woman with a "Flint Lives Matter" shirt walks toward a hearing room where Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy will testify on Capitol Hill in

By Serena Maria Daniels

FLINT, Mich. (Reuters) – Three Michigan state and local officials were criminally charged on Wednesday in an investigation into dangerous lead levels in the city of Flint’s drinking water, and the state attorney general said there would be more charges to come.

Genesee District Judge Tracy Collier-Nix authorized charges against Flint employee Michael Glasgow and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) employees Stephen Busch and Michael Prysby.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette told a news conference to announce the charges that it was “only the beginning and there will be more to come.” He said the defendants were cooperating with investigators.

The three could not be reached for comment.

Schuette added nothing was off the table when asked if Michigan Governor Rick Snyder could face charges. Snyder has been criticized for the administration’s handling of the crisis, and he has apologized but said he would not resign.

The Republican governor told a news conference in the capital, Lansing, later on Wednesday that he did not believe he had done anything criminally wrong in relation to the water crisis. He said his office has been cooperating with the state probe but that he himself had not been questioned.

“I’m not looking for vindication. This is about getting to the truth,” said Snyder, who called the charges “deeply troubling” and emphasized the state would pursue wrongdoing and hold people accountable.

Flint, which has about 100,000 people, was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager in 2014 when it switched its source of water from Detroit’s municipal system to the Flint River to save money. The city switched back in October.

The river water was more corrosive than the Detroit system’s and caused more lead to leach from its aging pipes. Lead can be toxic and children are especially vulnerable. The crisis has prompted lawsuits by parents who say their children are showing dangerously high blood levels of lead.

Glasgow, 40, was charged with tampering with evidence by falsifying reports to state environmental officials, and willful neglect of duty, Schuette said.

Busch, 40, and Prysby, 53, were charged with five and six counts, respectively, including misconduct in office, tampering with evidence and violation of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act, Schuette said. The attorney general said the two men misled authorities and altered results in the testing of lead levels in the water in Flint homes.

“They had a duty to protect the health of families and citizens of Flint,” Schuette said. “They failed.”

If convicted, Glasgow faces up to five years in prison and $6,000 in fines, while Busch faces up to 15 years and $35,000 in fines, and Prysby faces up to 20 years and $45,000 in fines, according to court documents.

Glasgow on Wednesday was placed on unpaid leave, city of Flint spokeswoman Kristin Moore said. The MDEQ officials charged were also suspended without pay as of Wednesday, Melanie Brown, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an email.

Dena Altheide, a court administrator, said court dates and arraignments had not been set.

FIRST STEP

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said holding people responsible was a good first step but that the city still needed the resources to fix the issue, including swapping out all the old lead pipes.

Wayne State University law professor Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor, said what happened in Flint was wrong, but whether it was criminal was a very different question.

“You have to now prove exactly what they did that violated the law. That’s just not easy,” Henning said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit and the FBI are independently investigating the crisis, looking for any violations of federal law, said Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

In January, Michigan’s Schuette named a special prosecutor to lead the investigation into whether criminal charges should be filed.

“The criminal charges against MDEQ officials are one step towards justice for the families of Flint who were poisoned as a result of the actions of Governor Snyder’s administration,” U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, said in a statement.

Cummings and other House Democrats have called for Snyder to step down.

Also on Wednesday, Democrats in the U.S. Senate introduced a legislative package to invest more than $70 billion over the next 10 years through loans, grants and tax credits in the country’s crumbling water infrastructure and lead relief programs.

(Reporting and writing by Ben Klayman; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Susan Cornwell and Susan Heavey in Washington, and David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Diane Craft and Peter Cooney)

Michigan Proposes strictest lead testing in country

The top of a water tower is seen at the Flint Water Plant in Flint, Michigan

DETROIT (Reuters) – Michigan officials and water experts on Friday proposed the state adopt what would be the nation’s strictest lead-testing rules in response to a water crisis in city of Flint that has fueled widespread public outrage.

A committee put in place by the state to respond to the Flint crisis recommended a lowering of the level of lead in water at which action is required by public water systems.

Any implementation would be through a combination of statutory, rule and other changes, said Ari Adler, a spokesman for Governor Rick Snyder. The potential costs, financing and timeline are still to be determined, he said.

Federal rules require action if lead levels top 15 parts per billion, but Michigan would reduce its threshold by 2020 to 10 parts per billion to align with World Health Organization standards, officials at the meeting held in Flint said.

The federal Lead and Copper Rule can only be altered nationally via federal action, according to a statement from the governor’s office. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told Congress on Wednesday that the agency would not have reforms ready until early 2017.

“The federal Lead and Copper Rule needs to be improved immediately,” the governor said in a statement. “It’s dumb and dangerous and in Michigan we aren’t going to wait for the federal government to fix it anymore.”

The committee also recommended that every public water system replace all lead service lines within 10 years.

Flint was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched the source of its tap water from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in April 2014 to save money.

The city switched back last October after tests found high levels of lead in children’s blood samples. The water from the river was corrosive and leached more lead from the city pipes than Detroit water did. Lead is a toxic agent that can damage the human nervous system.

On Wednesday, Michigan lawmakers extended the state of emergency in Flint for four months, enabling the city to tap more state funds and coordinate a response with other authorities.

Other recommendations by the Flint panel on Friday included annual lead testing for all schools, day care centers and other public facilities; disclosure of lead service-line status in all home sales and rental contracts; creation of water advisory councils for public systems to give residents a stronger voice; and better public notification when lead problems arise.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman; Editing by Alden Bentley)

Flint water system improving, but still unstable

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder drinks some water as he testifies for Flint Michigan water hearing on Capitol in Washington

DETROIT (Reuters) – The drinking water in Flint, Michigan, where high lead levels led to a health crisis that drew national attention, is improving, but remains unstable, a top environmental official said Friday.

“The drinking water system is recovering,” Robert Kaplan, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s acting administrator for the region that includes Flint, told local and state officials meeting in the city to discuss the crisis.

“You’ve got a dramatic decrease in the soluble lead. What we’re seeing though is particulate lead, which indicates that the system is unstable,” he told the meeting by phone.

Under the direction of a state-appointed emergency manager, Flint switched water supplies to the Flint River from Detroit’s system in 2014 to save money. The state has been criticized for its initial poor handling of the issue.

The corrosive river water leached lead, a toxic substance that can damage the nervous system, from the city’s water pipes. Flint switched back to the Detroit system last October.

“Whenever we see a positive trend in Flint’s water quality, that’s good news, but we still have much work to do to get people the quality of water they need and deserve,” Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said in a statement on Friday.

Kaplan said while the addition of chemical phosphates to recoat the pipes to inhibit corrosion is working, the almost invisible lead particles remain a random and unpredictable problem.

Kaplan said water filters reliably deal with the lead, but the best approach would be for residents to vigorously flush their home water systems by turning on all faucets and spigots and running the water to clean the sediment out and rebuild the protective phosphate coating.

He said local and state officials need to have a simple message for residents in the city of 100,000 people to take that approach.

“If we don’t have an extremely simple message, as in free water, you will not be charged for the water that you use that is related to this flushing, I’m afraid we’re not able to get that lead washed out of the system,” he said.

The state previously approved $30 million to help Flint residents pay their water bills dating back to when the switch to the Flint River was made.

Kaplan said a full recovery of Flint’s water system will take time, adding experts would not provide a time table at this point.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Newark school system set to test children for lead

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As many as 17,000 students in Newark, New Jersey schools could be tested for lead in their blood after findings showed elevated levels of the toxin have been in water in schools since at least 2012, city health officials said.

Voluntary lead testing began on Thursday in the state’s largest school district after 30 schools were found to have high levels of lead in the water fountains last week. The school district has about 35,000 students.

Health officials said the testing started with pupils at two early childhood centers, which were among schools where water fountains were shut off on March 9 after recent testing found lead levels exceeded the federal safety limit.

Officials earlier this week acknowledged the problem has plagued the district since 2012.

Lead has not been found in the water supply of the city of Newark, located 11 miles west of New York City, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) confirmed.

Still, the issue has brought comparisons to the crisis in Flint, Michigan. At a Congressional hearing on Thursday, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder testified that the lead contamination in water resulted from the cumulative failures of local, state and federal governments.

In Newark, the state DEP plans to test water at all 67 Newark public schools beginning on Saturday, starting with 13 charter schools and non-traditional school buildings, such as a athletic facilities, which were not tested this school year. It will then retest the 30 school buildings where lead levels above the federal limit of 15 parts per billion were found.

Nearly all the water taps where the highest levels were found are typically not used for drinking or food preparation, the school district said.

Lead issues date back as far as 2004, when remedial action was taken. Data collected by the district’s independent laboratory showed 12 percent of 2,067 water quality samples – collected from 2012 to 2015 – had lead levels above the federal limit requiring action.

Christopher Cerf, the new state-appointed school superintendent, declined to say why the district did not previously make public that information.

“Without intending to criticize any of my three predecessors, when I learned of the 2015 test results, I decided to address the situation differently,” he said in a statement on Wednesday. “Within an hour, I had notified state and city officials and directed staff to connect with the State Department of Environmental Protection.”

(Reporting by Marcus E. Howard; Editing by Bernard Orr)

The corrosive dangers lurking in America’s private wells

ORLEANS, N.Y. (Reuters) – In this town of 2,800 just south of the Canadian border, residents have long worried about the water flowing from their taps.

The water in one household is so corrosive it gutted three dishwashers and two washing machines. Another couple’s water is so salty the homeowners tape the taps when guests visit. Even the community’s welcome center warns travelers, “Do Not Drink The Water.”

So, when the water crisis in Flint, Michigan happened, Stephanie Weiss and husband Andy Greene feared that, as in Flint, their corrosive water was also unleashing lead into their tap water. Weiss scoured water-testing reports in Orleans and discovered the truth: Lead levels in her water – fed by a private well – exceed the threshold set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for public water systems and utilities.

The community’s experience is not unique. Across the country, millions of Americans served by private wells drink, bathe and cook with water containing potentially dangerous amounts of lead, Reuters reporting and recent university studies show.

Researchers from Penn State Extension and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, or Virginia Tech, tested private well systems in their states and found that 12 percent of wells in Pennsylvania and 19 percent in Virginia had lead levels exceeding the maximum EPA threshold for public water systems. Lead poisoning can lead to heart disease, kidney disease and brain damage. It is especially dangerous to children, as small amounts of exposure can cause irreversible developmental delays.

Though most Americans are served by public water utilities, private wells are the main source of drinking water for 15 percent of U.S. households, or 47.8 million people. Typically located in rural areas, private wells serve residents not connected to municipal water lines. Though many wells are found in impoverished communities, some serve wealthy homeowners and those living in urban environments.

Little research has examined the lead risk in private well water on a national scale. But if the researchers’ rate played out nationally, more than 9 million Americans served by private wells would have unsafe levels of lead in their water, according to a paper published in October by some of the same Virginia Tech researchers who found lead in Flint’s water.

TESTING GAP

Yet these private wells always fall outside EPA testing regulations, and only a few states require that wells be tested for lead. Unless residents pay for tests, they may not know what lurks in their water.

The community in Orleans, in Jefferson County dotting the northernmost tip of New York State, is one case study. Weiss and Greene found that the water they use to cook for their two children, ages eight and 10, measured lead levels more than double the EPA threshold, town records show.

“When I realized that my water had the equivalent of Flint levels of lead, I got chills,” said Weiss, assistant director of Save the River, an environmental advocacy organization. “I felt sick thinking of all the things I had tried to get right as a mother for my kids to grow up happy and healthy, when all the while they were living with lead contaminated water.”

“I was also angry thinking that the state government had likely caused this situation.”

The aquifer feeding their well is polluted with salt from a nearby barn used by the New York State Department of Transportation to store salt spread on roads during snowstorms, according to an analysis by Alpha Geoscience, a Clifton Park, New York, consulting firm that specializes in hydrogeologic studies. The study was commissioned by Stephen Conaway, a local winery owner who sued the state for allegedly polluting his water in 2011.

As far back as 2004, a DOT official told Conaway it was not unreasonable to assume the salt barn was the source of contamination, according to a letter sent to Conaway and reviewed by Reuters.

Flint is not served by private wells, but its battle to get the lead out of the water has triggered alarms in other communities – including those served by private wells, which can draw in corrosive water that leaches lead, copper and other heavy metals from well components, water pipes and plumbing fixtures.

NO STANDARDS

The EPA has no standards for private wells, even as the National Ground Water Association recommends testing. Asked about the standards gap, an EPA spokesman said that the Safe Drinking Water Act, as written by Congress in 1974, makes the EPA responsible for regulating only public water systems.

Under the EPA Lead and Copper Rule, published in 1991, if 10 percent of samples taken by a water utility contain a lead level of 15 parts per billion or higher, the utility must improve corrosion control and inform the public of the lead risk. The utility may have to replace lead water lines.

The university researchers used this standard to assess potential harm in communities served by private wells.

Water from one Virginia home had lead levels 1,600 times the EPA maximum threshold, concluded Virginia Tech researcher Kelsey J. Pieper, lead author of a study published in the Journal of Water and Health last September that examined lead levels in tap water from houses in Virginia using wells. Pieper’s research, along with a 2013 Journal of Environmental Health study by Penn State Extension researchers, point to a problem governments have largely failed to address.

Lead exposures decreased after 1980s legislation banned lead in paint and gasoline. But private wells remain a potential source of exposure. If lead exposure from private wells is not addressed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be challenged to meet its goal of eliminating elevated levels of lead in children by 2020, Pieper found.

Pieper said many private wells across the country have clean water, but she recommends testing.

“Looking at lead concentration in Flint’s water and our results in private wells in Virginia, they were similar,” Pieper said. “One of the biggest differences is it’s solely the responsibility of the homeowner to identify and correct the problem for private water systems.”

To be sure, private homeowners are responsible for testing and maintaining their wells.

Yet many have no idea they should test for lead. Some who do test find troubling answers.

LEAD AND CHILDREN IN PENNSYLVANIA

In central Pennsylvania, Jeremiah Underhill and his wife took their one-year-old son Dalton to the family doctor for his checkup in April 2014. Knowing the family was renovating their 76-year-old house, and concerned paint in the house may contain lead, their doctor suggested testing Dalton for lead.

The results showed elevated lead levels in his system.

“I was devastated,” said Jeremiah Underhill, an attorney in Harrisburg, whose family home is surrounded by 30 acres of corn and soybean fields.

The Underhills immediately began a battery of tests searching for the lead’s source. For years, public health experts have cited paint as the most dangerous source of poisoning for children, who may ingest paint chips and dust in older housing.

But it was a water sample, not paint, which tested positive for lead. The lead level in the water was at the maximum threshold set by the EPA, though Penn State analysts warned that the levels could fluctuate and may well exceed the maximum if tested more regularly. The Underhills found that, as in Flint, their well water was corrosive and leaching lead from plumbing in their house.

The family installed a treatment system to make the water less acidic. Their soda-ash injection system cost about $400, though if a family member had not helped install it, the cost would have been far higher. Today, their water has no lead and Dalton’s blood work is clear. The couple feels fortunate to have caught it early, knowing lead exposure can trigger brain damage.

“The only reason we caught this was because our doctor was smart enough to say, ‘Let’s test this,’” Underhill said. “I mean, it was the water we used to mix Dalton’s formula.”

Most children are never tested, and rules on testing children for lead exposure are inconsistent and often ignored across the country, Reuters found.

“Many physicians, wrongly, don’t believe that lead poisoning is still a problem,” said Dr. Jennifer Lowry, a toxicologist and pediatrician at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. “They may not be seeing it because they are not testing for it. I think every kid should be tested.”

SURPRISING SOURCES

Many people believe if they have a new home or well, their plumbing does not contain lead. Yet virtually all plumbing before 2014 has some lead in its components, and older homes tend to have more leaded plumbing. Until January 2014, “lead free” meant the plumbing component contained less than 8 percent lead.

In Highlands, North Carolina, Robert and Suzanne Gregory discovered lead in their water after drilling a well for their home last August.

Macon County required they test the new well for bacteria. Robert, an engineer, wanted to know more and paid for an in-depth test that found the water corrosive and contaminated with lead. He believed the source was the galvanized steel pipe that ran down his well. The couple had the galvanized pipe, whose coating may have contained lead, replaced with lead-free stainless steel. They tested again and the lead was gone.

“The combination of acidic water and galvanized steel is a problem, and I think it’s bigger than most people understand because most people don’t even know they have galvanized,” Robert said.

Even if a homeowner conducts a lead test, the solutions can be too expensive for families with limited means. Some water treatment systems cost more than $10,000.

Only a few states, including New Jersey and Rhode Island, require wells be tested for lead – a test required when the property and well are transferred to a new owner. Though many states require tests for e coli and other bacteria, lead tests are seldom required, said John Hudson, vice president at Mortgage Financial Services in San Antonio, Texas.

A PLEA FOR CLEAN WATER

Some residents know they have contaminated wells and want municipal water, but can’t get it.

In Orleans, New York, residents live in a region known for its boating, fishing and outdoor activities but also its doggedly high unemployment rate. The town began petitioning the state for municipal water four years ago. Since then, residents have made flyers and set up a Facebook page, but there’s still no plan in place for public water.

State officials say they aim to obtain $13 million to extend municipal water service to homes in Orleans with contaminated water, but Kevin Rarick, the Orleans town supervisor, calls the plan “smoke and mirrors.” Almost all of the money would come from a loan that would cost each water user $500 a year to pay off, and the state has not announced a plan to change the way it stores salt at the barn.

Homeowner Greene, whose family has had to replace salt-tainted appliances, views the equation as unfair: The state polluted the aquifer feeding his well, and now wants his community to bankroll the solution.

New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation said the source of the salt is “inconclusive,” and that the salt has been stored safely. An official noted that the state has given residents bottled water.

“If I had a salt pile that leached salt into my neighbor’s well, the state would be here the next day fining me and making me clean it up and making me be a good neighbor,” said Greene. “That’s all we want from them, to be a good neighbor.”

(Edited by Ronnie Greene)

Flint Mayor Declares State of Emergency As Lead Seeps Into Water Supply

The new mayor of Flint, Michigan, declared a state of emergency earlier this week, the latest development in the embattled city’s ongoing battle with elevated levels of lead in its water.

Karen Weaver, who became mayor in November, said in a statement on the city’s website that she made the declaration to raise awareness that the water still isn’t safe to drink, almost two months after the city stopped taking problematic water from the Flint River and reverted to its old supplier, the city of Detroit. Weaver said Flint was experiencing “a man-made disaster.”

“It’s been going on for over a year now,” Weaver said in a televised interview on The Rachel Maddow Show. “We have problems with our infrastructure. We have children that have been damaged by this lead. They have permanent brain damage. We know that Flint is not in a position to bear this burden alone, and we are asking and looking for state and federal assistance. The only way we were going to have this happen was to declare a state of emergency.”

According to MLive.com, which covers news in Michigan, the problem started in April 2014. That’s when the city stopped taking water from Detroit and started taking water from the Flint River as it awaited the construction of a new pipeline to Lake Huron. City officials decided not to ink a short-term contract with Detroit, which gets water from the lake, and use the river instead.

But in her interview with Rachel Maddow, Weaver said that the river water was corrosive and damaged a protective part of the city’s pipes, allowing lead to leach out into the water supply. Michigan Radio reported that city and state officials continued to insist the water was safe, even as scientists from Virginia Tech found higher levels of lead in the city’s tap water. MLive.com reported the city finally issued a lead advisory in September 2015, 17 months after the switch.

The city reverted to Detroit’s water system in October, but the danger of lead exposure is still very much real. The problem is no longer with the water source, but Flint’s damaged pipes.

“We don’t want people to feel that because we’ve made the switch back to Detroit water that everything is fine now, because it’s not,” Weaver said in her interview with Maddow.

The World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, says that lead poisoning is particularly harmful to children. It’s known to damage nervous and reproductive systems, as well as cause high blood pressure and anemia. If enough lead gets into the blood of children, it can lead to irreversible consequences like learning disabilities, retardation and even death.

In September 2015, the day before the city issued the lead advisory, doctors from the Hurley Medical Center released a study that found that more of Flint’s children were displaying elevated levels of lead in their blood since the switch. The percentage of children with elevated lead levels went from 2.1 percent to 4 percent citywide, though it was as high as 6.3 percent in some areas.

Speaking to British newspaper The Guardian on Thursday, one of the doctors responsible for that study, Mona Hanna-Attisha, said up to 15 percent of children in certain parts of the city now have high levels of lead in their blood. Hanna-Attisha called the water situation “an emergency” and said it was “a disaster right here in Flint that is alarming and absolutely gut-wrenching.”

“We are assuming that the entire population of the city of Flint has been exposed, if you drank the water or cooked with the water,” Hanna-Attisha told the newspaper, noting that cooking with the water would actually concentrate the levels of lead. According to Flint’s website, the levels of lead “remain well above” federal safety standards for drinking water “in many homes.”

In her interview with Maddow, Weaver said some kids under the age of six have neurological damage, and the city would have to attempt to provide services to them and their families.

The city encourages residents to keep using water filters while it works on a long-term solution.