Feb.25, 2004
By David Nakamura and Avram Goldstein, Washington Post Staff Writers

D.C. health officials plan to announce today that all pregnant women and children younger than 6 who live in homes with lead service lines should immediately stop drinking unfiltered tap water and have their blood tested, a rare safety measure they say is necessary to safeguard the city's most vulnerable population.

Early word of the advisory yesterday prompted D.C. Water and Sewer Authority officials to say they likely will distribute free water filters to those households, estimated to be as many as 10,000 of the roughly 23,000 homes with lead service lines. However, even agency officials have acknowledged that their database of lead service lines is incomplete.

The water agency also released results yesterday of tests performed on 752 water fountains and sinks in 154 D.C. school system buildings that found eight faucets with lead levels above the federal limit of 15 parts per billion. [Story, Page B1.] But some environmentalists questioned the results, arguing that the water agency had conducted the tests improperly.

The health advisory marks a strong shift in the approach city government and water agency officials have taken in dealing with the discovery last summer that water in thousands of city homes tested above the federal lead limit. For months, even after media reports disclosed the elevated lead levels 31/2 weeks ago, officials have approached the problem as a matter of engineering and water chemistry. Now, for the first time, they have prioritized public health concerns.

"At the end of the day, it isn't whether there is an engineering solution, but whether the water is safe to drink," City Administrator Robert C. Bobb said. "That's what is on people's hearts, souls and minds. We want to assure the public that there are precautions in place to protect them."

"We're advising this to be on the safe side," said D.C. Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large), co-chair of an interagency task force, who will hold a hearing on the lead problems today at 2 p.m. at the Wilson Building. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) will hold a congressional hearing on the matter on March 5.

District health officials described their advisory as a cautionary measure necessary until WASA chemists and engineers figure out what is causing lead to leach from pipes into the water supply in many homes. But determining the cause of the lead problem could take several months, WASA officials said. And solving the problem could take years.

A WASA team, including independent experts on water-quality issues, has launched a series of tests to determine whether it is possible to stop the leaching of lead pipes by softening the water with chemicals at the treatment plant, a process known as corrosion control. But Michael Marcotte, WASA's deputy general manager, said yesterday that it could take one to four years for officials to be confident that a new corrosion-control method is effective.

In the meantime, WASA officials have been studying how costly it would be to replace the city's estimated 23,000 lead pipes on an accelerated basis. The fastest timetable would be five years and would cost all WASA customers as much as $7 .75 a month extra on their water bills, officials said.

WASA's board of directors authorized the agency's managers to develop a plan to distribute water filters to homes with pregnant women and children younger than 6. Officials estimated that the filters could cost WASA as much as $500,000, but expenses could grow if the health advisory continued for a long time and filter replacements had to be mailed to the households.

"We're on very new ground here," Marcotte said at a midday WASA news conference.

WASA conducted tests last summer on tap water at 6,118 residences, and most of them, 4,075 homes, had water that exceeded the lead limit set by the EPA in 1991. This is the first time the city's water has shown significant lead contamination since the late 1980s, officials said.

The D.C. Department of Health's advisory will be mailed in a letter to homeowners who are thought by WASA to have lead service lines. In the letter, officials will stress that parents should avoid mixing baby formula with unfiltered tap water. Telephone numbers will be included to reach the Health Department's free lead screening program for pregnant women and children younger than 6.

"I'm glad the Health Department took the action that it did," said Jim Elder, former director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Safe Drinking Water office, who has been critical that D.C. and federal authorities had not done more to publicize the health concerns. "That's the most responsible thing that's been done so far."

Bobb said he was not ready to declare a public health emergency, which would give the city special authority to purchase goods and services rapidly. But he was adopting the same organizational approach, ordering 14 city agencies to get involved. The city's Emergency Management Agency will coordinate the District's response with the efforts of the EPA and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Daniel Lucey, the Health Department's interim chief medical officer, said last night that he drafted the health advisory with input from experts including Mary Jean Brown, chief of the lead poisoning branch of CDC's environmental health center. The letter will go into the mail today or tomorrow, Lucey said.

Yet to be worked out, he said, is whether the District will provide alternate drinking water sources to affected residents who cannot pay for bottled water or filters.

Lucey, who took office two weeks ago for a 90-day term, could not explain why the Health Department had not taken charge of the issue until this week.

"I don't know the answer to that," he said. "When I got here, [lead] was here, and I was directed to get involved."

WASA officials said the results of tests on schools showed that water in the buildings is safe. Of the 752 school faucets that were tested -- about five in each of 154 school system buildings -- eight faucets showed elevated lead levels. Those same eight buildings -- seven schools and an administrative building -- also had several other faucets that showed no problems, officials said.

"The way to overcome fear is with facts, and the fact is that in most cases, there have been non-detectable traces of lead" in the schools, WASA General Manager Jerry N. Johnson said.

But some environmentalists criticized the method WASA used to conduct the water tests at schools. Federal guidelines for private homes require tests on water drawn immediately from faucets that have not been used for six hours -- water that usually has higher levels of lead because it has sat in pipes that are either made of lead or might have lead fixtures.

But in 730 tests, WASA officials allowed the water to run for 10 minutes before drawing a test sample.

"That's absurd. It's like designing a program not to find the problem," said Erik Olson, lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

WASA officials defended their methodology. They acknowledged that in private homes, flushing the pipes for 10 minutes would draw samples from water mains that generally have little or no lead content.

But in schools, which have more intricate pipe networks, flushing the pipes for 10 minutes draws water that has sat in the internal plumbing and could have the highest lead content, officials said.

To be cautious, WASA officials said, they also tested 22 samples of water drawn immediately from the faucets and found none that had elevated lead levels.

But D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4) said WASA should retest because "children don't flush the water 10 minutes before they drink it."

Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

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