California has to do more to keep poisonous lead from contaminating our drinking water

Benton Harbor, Mich., recently became the latest community where persistent lead contamination in drinking water drew national attention. Media attention to this problem is good, but when it’s in another community or neighborhood, too many of us simply shrug. The truth, however, is that such contamination is much more widespread than the few pockets the public hears about.

It’s a serious problem here in California. For decades, water utilities installed service lines — the pipes that bring water from mains under the streets into our homes — made entirely of lead. These toxic pipes are the single largest source of drinking water contamination, accounting for 50% to 75% percent of lead contamination at the tap in homes, child care centers and other buildings. There are still an estimated 65,000 lead service lines left in California.

What makes this problem even worse is that lead contamination is pervasive in our schools. The latest publicly available data found lead in the drinking water of 1,300 California schools.

This is a red flag. Lead is especially toxic to young children. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, even low levels of lead exposure in children “have been linked to damage to the central and peripheral nervous system, learning disabilities, shorter stature, impaired hearing, and impaired formation and function of blood cells.”

Every major public health organization agrees that there is no safe level of lead, and the EPA acknowledges that there should be zero lead in drinking water.

There is no shortcut to cleaning up this mess. If we want drinking water to be safe for our kids, we must literally get the lead out of our water delivery systems. That means replacing each and every toxic pipe.

California is among several states committed to taking inventory of and replacing lead service lines over time. But it’s also important that these pipe and fitting fixes be made carefully. There must be safety precautions in place for consumers, and that’s where California is lagging.

The first problem is that California allows utilities to remove just part of a lead pipe and leave some of it in the ground, a practice that can cause the remaining lead to leach into customers’ water. Full lead line removal, which eliminates all of the lead pipes between a water main and a home, is the safest method, preventing continued lead contamination of drinking water. Other states, including Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey, have required full lead line removal to protect the public.

The second problem is that state regulators are not requiring water utilities to follow nationally recognized health and safety standards when replacing or disturbing lead lines. Residents should be notified of all retrofitting activity and provided with water filters to remove lead released by line disturbances as well as testing after construction.

The good news is that Congress is considering legislation that would dedicate significant resources to removing lead from our drinking water. This is a golden opportunity to finally get the lead out and have the resources to do it properly.

Nevertheless, water utilities still need clear guidance and enforcement from state regulators so that lead pipes are removed in the safest manner possible. We’re looking to our state leaders to make sure we do everything we can to get this right.