“I get the impression this whole issue is garnering national attention to make the case the federal government should replace the plumbing for all of Flint (on the taxpayers’ backs instead of the residents’). They’re blowing it up to “Love Canal” proportions so they can handle it the same way. Now there is news that many homes in northeastern NJ have the same issue; doubt it will get much national coverage because most of those impacted are white middle-class Americans.”
I think you did a great job describing the “big picture” there. Fact is there there is no lead in most water mains. I believe the lead is coming from service connections lines running from the mains to individual residences (between the street and the house).
Although Public Water Supply Systems (PWWS) are supposed to monitor the drinking water they provide, including testing for lead, they do little of the testing at individual residences. There are just too many and the water supply has no requirement to check every residence. They don’t have the staffing, and the Safe Drinking Water Act doesn’t require it.
I’m sure there are other communities in the same boat, i.e. with many of the homes (especially older ones) with lead service lines.
I’ve been watching the Flint case pretty carefully because I was in the water supply business for a while. We had to do all the water testing and when a problem was found we had to correct it, and quickly. Fortunately my customers were in a community with extraordinary infrastructure for their utilities. I’m only about an hour’s drive from Flint, sometimes called the armpit of Michigan.
I think the root of the problem, in this case, is that when Flint switched their supply they failed to properly treat the water with corrosion inhibitor. Now who would be at fault for that? I have a lot of questions...
Lead sampling is not done by the public water supplier at every address but a representative number of samples at the point of entry based upon population are taken. 90% of the samples must be below 15 parts per billion lead - not good if you happen to be in the top 10%. Flint was less than 4 parts per billion 90% of the time for the second half of 2018.
I used to work for a public water supply that used phosphoric acid as a corrosion inhibitor. This was closely monitored both by the utility and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to whom we submitted monthly reports.
Still don’t understand why Flint didn’t use a corrosion inhibitor when they switched raw water supplies or what the reaction of the MDEQ regulators might have been.