DC Water Maps Lead-Service Lines

As the government pressures utilities to make lead data public, DC Water’s mapping project is one model for increasing transparency.

It remains to be seen if such an extensive effort is realistic at cash-strapped water providers around the country.

Washington’s water utility, known for its forward-thinking policies, mapped virtually every building in the city, covering, schools, museums, residences, and even the White House, according to Lindsay McCormick, a research analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund.

The map populates each building “with a color-coded circle indicating whether... the public and private sides of the service line is lead, non-lead, or there’s no available information. The data are based on a combination of physical inspections, consumer reports, and historical data. As such, there is variability in the reliability of each data point, which DC Water is careful to disclose,” she wrote.

McCormick explained why it is useful for utilities to take this approach:

Despite data gaps, the map allows DC residents to make their own informed decisions. Those who find a white, “no information,” circle can take steps to help understand if their home may have a lead pipe, through physical inspection or free testing provided by the city. Those with evidence of lead may pursue options to replace their lead pipes. Others may utilize temporary solutions, such as installing an NSF approved filter on their water faucet and always using cold tap water for drinking and cooking.

Water utilities do not always know where lead service lines are in their systems.

“Lead service lines are an aging infrastructure, typically found in communities with older housing. Local recordkeeping over the years has been inconsistent, leaving many utilities today to rely on incomplete, difficult to access, or non-electronic historical records. Many communities appear to have no documentation of when they ceased installing lead service lines altogether,” McCormick wrote.

“The first step is to begin to understand what we do know and make that information available to the public — thereby raising awareness, creating demand for more information, and allowing everyone to act,” she argued.

The U.S. EPA is waging a campaign urging water managers to offer more transparency around lead in drinking water. EPA officials sent out letters to state drinking water regulators pushing them to make lead sampling results available to the public in online databases.

Some states, including Illinois, already publish this data, according to the report. The EPA says a “substantial number” of states post this information. Other states, including Iowa, have pushed back, arguing that information technology resources and privacy concerns pose hurdles to such transparency.

D.C. is no stranger to the fight against lead contamination. The city underwent a major lead crisis early in the century.

Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech scientist who helped uncover the lead crisis in Flint, MI, described Washington’s lead crisis: “People don’t realize this — the extent of the problem in D.C. was about 20 to 30 times larger than Flint,” he said, per WTOP. “There was more lead poisoning, more exposure of people.”

Adding orthophosphate to the treatment process eventually helped rectify matters in D.C., the report said.

To read more about aging infrastructure visit Water Online’s Asset Management Solutions Center.