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Chicago Will Test Water for Lead on Higher-Risk Streets

With rising public concern about the threat posed by lead pipes connecting thousands of Chicago homes to the public water supply, city officials announced Monday they will begin testing tap water on streets that face greater risks of exposure to the brain-damaging metal.

By Michael Hawthorne

With rising public concern about the threat posed by lead pipes connecting thousands of Chicago homes to the public water supply, city officials announced Monday they will begin testing tap water on streets that face greater risks of exposure to the brain-damaging metal.

The Chicago Department of Water Management said it will enlist volunteers to have their water tested before and after street mains are replaced -- work that federal researchers have found can cause alarming levels of lead to leach into tap water for weeks, months or even years afterward.

Soon after taking office in 2011, Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed to increase water rates to finance a more aggressive effort to replace leaky water mains, many of which were installed during the late 1800s and early 1900s. More than 440 miles of water mains have been replaced since then with new cast iron pipes, but in most cases they were reconnected to old lead service lines that run between the street and individual homes.

City officials say Chicago tap water is safe because they add chemicals to the water supply that form a protective coating inside lead pipes. At the same time, they acknowledge bursts of lead can flow out of household taps, in particular if water hasn't been used for several hours.

"The department strives to provide the cleanest, best-tasting water possible, and this new study is just the latest example of our efforts to ensure we're using the most up-to-date methods to ensure water quality," Barrett Murphy, the city's water commissioner, said in a statement.

The city's announcement comes as researchers are finding that even tiny amounts of lead can permanently damage the brains of young children, increasing the chance they will suffer learning disabilities and be more prone to criminal behavior later in life. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there is no safe level of exposure.

By trying to persuade homeowners to have their taps sampled before and after new water mains are installed, city officials are attempting to broaden the scope of limited testing that shows lead levels can vary dramatically depending on when and how water is collected.

The Tribune first reported in February that the Water Department bases its assurances of safety on 50 federally mandated tests conducted every three years. When conducting those tests, the department has rarely tested on streets where a water main has been replaced

Moreover, the vast majority of the homes tested are owned by people who work for or retired from the Water Department, the same taxpayer-funded agency that would be required under federal law to earmark millions of dollars to replace lead pipes if the city violated safe drinking water standards.

The city has since begun offering to send residents a test kit to collect water samples and mail them to a laboratory for analysis. Results posted online show widely ranging levels in the first liter of drawn water -- from less than 1 part per billion to as high as 272 parts per billion.

Several homes where high levels were detected were sampled again by the Water Department. While the first liter drawn in some of the homes had low levels of lead, spikes of the toxic metal showed up as more water flowed from the lead service line through the tap.

City officials have been on the defensive since 2013, when EPA researchers published a peer-reviewed study that found street work and plumbing repairs in Chicago inadvertently caused the toxic metal to leach into tap water by shaking loose the protective coating inside lead service lines. The chief author of the EPA study later played a major role in documenting problems with lead-contaminated water in Flint, Mich.

Any household with a lead service line should flush pipes for three to five minutes any time water hasn't been used for several hours, according to the EPA. Residents also are advised to purchase water filters certified to remove "total lead."

Though city officials cooperated with the EPA study, they have repeatedly challenged the findings.

In an email Monday, an Emanuel spokeswoman said, "Any conclusions about the impact of construction are not scientifically established and are based on an insufficient sample size that didn't test water before and after construction. It is misleading at best to say there is federal research concluding that construction causes high lead levels in water."

Chicago required the use of lead service lines until the mid-1980s -- long after other major cities had outlawed them. But under a longtime Chicago ordinance, most service lines are considered private property that homeowners must themselves pay to remove if they so choose.

(c)2016 the Chicago Tribune

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