Local water worries unfounded
Independent testing finds New London tap water lead-free
When news hit this winter that lead had poisoned the drinking water in Flint, Mich., at least two residents of this coastal city 700 miles away took it a little more personally than most.
“I was very concerned, because I have family in Detroit,” said Terren Gainer, who bought her 87-year-old home on Ledyard Street in New London two years ago, referring to the city just south of Flint. “You just start thinking that you never know what’s going on. Sometimes you do have to question authority.”
She began wondering whether she and her two children, ages 8 and 16, should continue drinking the water from their home tap, which comes from municipal reservoirs that serve New London and Waterford. Since residents of Flint couldn’t trust what officials had been telling them about the safety of their water, should she trust their counterparts in New London?
Like Gainer, Reona Dyess, executive director of the Drop-In Learning Center, also has family in Detroit, and knew from talking with them on a recent visit how deeply violated that community felt by what had happened to their neighbors.
“It affects all of us as a community,” said Dyess, who is the youth adviser to the local chapter of the NAACP. “If it happened in Flint, it can happen anywhere.”
Dyess said she has seen first-hand the effects of lead poisoning on a few children at the day-care center over her two decades there, so she was appalled to learn about all the Flint children exposed to the toxic heavy metal. The New London children were exposed by lead-based paint in their homes rather than lead in their water supply, but the effects are the same.
“You see the developmental delays in these kids,” she said. “In Flint, now we’re looking at many kids having lifelong disabilities. It’s disgusting.”
At the request of The Day, Dyess, Gainer and eight other residents from addresses throughout
“If it happened in Flint, it can happen anywhere.”
REONA DYESS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE DROP-IN LEARNING CENTER
“A lot of people think that clean water is a human right, so it’s important to ask questions. And it’s well established that lead is a risk, so it’s something people should take seriously.” CAROLYN WILSON, HEALTH PROGRAMS COORDINATOR, LEDGE LIGHT
New London agreed to have their tap water tested independently from the required testing being done regularly by the municipal water system, which has not yielded any recent violations of federal lead limits.
Last week, the 10 residents got some good news. None of their water samples had lead levels in excess of the federal “action level” of 15 parts per billion. That’s the equivalent of 15 micrograms per liter, an incomprehensibly tiny amount that indicates just how damaging exposure to lead can be, especially to children. If any samples in excess of 15 parts per billion had been found, public health and public utilities officials say they would have launched a variety of responses, first among them retesting to validate the findings.
“It’s a real relief,” said Fred Weaver, one of the participants who lives on Town Hill Court with his 8-yearold daughter. “I’m a health nut, so I drink bottled water. But I do use the tap water to cook with.”
Only one of the 10 samples had any lead higher than the lowest amount the testing instrument can reliably detect, which is 5 parts per billion. That sample, from Tracee Reiser’s house on Gardner Avenue, had 6.79 parts per billion, still well below the “action level.”
“I have an old house, so I’m not really surprised,” said Reiser, associate director of the Holleran Center for Community Action & Public Policy at Connecticut College, whose home dates from 1852. “I’m a very healthconscious person, and I like water and I drink a lot of water. I do have reservations about drinking the tap water, so I drink bottled water.”
She said that even though her water tested below the “action level,” she plans to contact the public utility officials to check her system. A separate test showing a low pH reading for her water is an added concern, she said.
“I’ll continue drinking bottled water and see what further testing we need,” she said.
Tests at UConn
Christopher Perkins, laboratory director of the Center for Environmental Sciences & Engineering at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, explained the testing, which the lab did for The Day.
“First,” he said Tuesday, speaking over the hum of the sophisticated machine testing the samples, “we take each individual sample and add concentrated acids and digest them at high temperatures for four to five hours. That breaks down any elements tied up in the water into particulates.”
Once that was complete, the samples were placed in vials in an optical emission spectrometer that automates the testing process, reading the presence of elements as different wavelengths of light. After a few hours, all 10 samples plus multiple control and calibration samples had been analyzed, with the lead results appearing on small graphs on a screen. The results were a relief not only for the 10 residents, but for all 7,000 households in Waterford and New London using the municipal water supply, said Joe Lanzafame, director of public utilities for the city.
“That makes me feel very good,” he said Tuesday.
Not that he had any reason to doubt the results would be otherwise. Routine required testing repeatedly has shown the reservoir system provides consistently high quality water, unlike the corrosive supply from the Flint River that, with the old lead pipe distribution system there, was the source of that community’s problems.
In New London and Waterford, the 250 miles of water mains are made mainly of cast iron and copper, Lanzafame said. Periodically — usually when public utilities crews are trying to find and fix a leak — an old lead service line leading from the main pipe to the house is discovered. Until it was banned from new construction in the 1980s, lead had been commonly used for pipes because it is resistant to leaks, relatively abundant and easy to shape, according to Plumbing Manufacturers International, a trade group.
“We replaced one lead service line in 2016, and a few in 2015,” Lanzafame said. “They were replaced with copper pipes. Overall, our distribution system is in good shape. We don’t have a lot of corrosion and distribution system problems.”
Since 2014, Ledge Light Health District has found two vacant homes in the city with high lead levels in the water, one in October and the other a year earlier. Both homes were being tested before renovation projects as part of the requirements for the owners to receive housing rehabilitation funds administered by the city. In one of the houses, faucets containing lead were found to be the culprit, said Ryan McCammon, supervisor of environmental health at Ledge Light, the public health agency for New London, Waterford, East Lyme, Groton and Ledyard. In the other, lead pipes within the home were believed to have been the cause. In both cases, the owners would have had to remove the source of the lead contamination to receive the funds.
Flint caused anxiety
For the 10 homeowners who participated in the local water testing, the results provided reassurance about the quality of the water coming from their faucets. Still, the crisis in Flint hasn’t put all their questions to rest.
“This allows us to relax,” said Jerry Fischer, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut, who provided a water sample from the 1880 house on Channing Street where the organization has its offices. “There was anxiety after the revelations in Flint.”
But he and others remain concerned about the public water infrastructure in aging cities like New London.
“We don’t allocate enough resources to maintaining the quality of our systems,” Reiser said.
Lead levels of 400 to as high as 13,200 parts per billion were found in Flint’s water, with residents there reporting rashes and loss of hair, memory and vision, among other symptoms. One in six homes in Flint, a city of 100,000 mostly poor residents, had lead in their water exceeding the federal safety threshold. According to the World Health Organization, lead poisoning harms neurological and behavioral development, and its effects are believed to be irreversible.
Like others, Carolyn Wilson, who provided a water sample from her 1910 home on Ocean Avenue, hopes some good can come out of the crisis in Flint, if people become more attentive to the quality of their own water and the health risks of exposure to lead.
“A lot of people think that clean water is a human right, so it’s important to ask questions,” said Wilson, who is a health programs coordinator at Ledge Light. “And it’s well established that lead is a risk, so it’s something people should take seriously.”