Avoiding A Future Crisis, Madison Removed Lead Water Pipes 15 Years Ago
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Flint, Mich., is just one place suffering from a health crisis because of lead water pipes. Across the country, millions of old, lead pipes are being used despite the health concerns, and replacing them is not easy. Madison, Wis., began working years ago to eliminate all of its lead water pipes. Cheryl Corley explains how they did it.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: It's a chilly, overcast afternoon in Madison. And Matt Grauvogl is watching as his water utility crew guides the jaw-like shovel of a backhoe scooping dirt into a truck.
MATT GRAUVOGL: We're digging the water shut off boxes for the pipelining project.
CORLEY: Another crew member climbs down into the hole and starts shoveling. Six feet down and the copper water line is visible. Madison started using copper instead of lead water pipes in the late 1920s. The bulk of the lead lines were located in the older part of the city downtown near Wisconsin's state Capitol. That's where Sue Bauman lives now. She was Madison's mayor from 1997 to 2003.
SUE BAUMAN: I remember one day one of my mayoral aides came in and said he had met with the water utility and there was this issue about these lead pipes and I'm like, what?
CORLEY: The Environmental Protection Agency's lead and copper rule issued in 1991 set limits on the concentration of lead and copper in drinking water. The following year, the water utility learned that 10 percent of the samples of Madison water and tests conducted shortly afterwards showed higher lead levels than the EPA allowed. That would also be the case about five years later. Chemical engineer Abigail Cantor tested the phosphate authorities recommended to prevent lead from leaching into Madison's water. What she found was shocking.
ABIGAIL CANTOR: The lead increased four times over the untreated water.
CORLEY: Cantor says other additives created even more problems. Madison gets its drinking water from an underground aquifer. But city officials worry the chemicals used to prevent corrosion could cause algae and weeds in the city's lakes because of excess nutrients in water runoff.
CANTOR: So I went to the management at the water utility and said you can't use these recommended chemicals, and there's no other - you just have to get rid of the lead pipes.
CORLEY: Madison's decision to rip out and replace all of its lead pipes was a bold proposal in 2000.
JOE GRANDE: There was tremendous pushback from homeowners.
CORLEY: Joe Grande, the utility's water quality manager, says there were concerns about cost. Legally, the water utility only had to pay for the portion of the lead service lines that ran from the city's water main up to a home or business property line. But Grande says Madison also wanted those residents to replace their half of the lead lines.
GRANDE: Studies have shown that if you only do a partial replacement, the utility comes and replaces their portion of the service that there is no improvement in lead levels in the water, and it actually could be worse.
CORLEY: Because of a shakeup of lead particles that could leach into the water. Getting approval, though, from regulators and lawmakers and by-in of homeowners took years. For nearly 6,000 property owners, it meant about a $1,300 plumbing bill. Madison reimbursed half of that cost. It took the city 11 years and $15.5 million to replace 8,000 lead water lines. Water manager Grande says samples of Madison water still show lead as present but at levels well below EPA limits.
GRANDE: That's coming from solder. That's coming from brass fittings, also coming from fixtures as well.
CORLEY: Nevertheless, former Mayor Bauman considers Madison's lead pipe removal program a big success and says it was the right thing to do.
BAUMAN: It was a forever solution. And if you looked at the cost of adding chemicals to the water system, to the water supply forever compared with the one-time cost of replacing, over time you were better off.
CORLEY: Now as communities across the country pay much closer attention to the pipes that bring water into homes, Madison is an example they may turn to as efforts continue to make drinking water safer. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Madison.
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