Warren close to providing public with map of lead water lines

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Soon, city residents will be able to check a map to see whether they are among an estimated 400 to 800 city properties that have lead waterlines running between the street and their home.

Having a lead service line increases the possibility that water customers will have unacceptably high lead levels in their drinking water.

Franco Lucarelli, Warren utilities director, said the water department has nearly finished a color-coded map of the city that will be available on the city’s website and in printed form at the water department on Laird Avenue Southeast by the March 9 deadline set by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

The mapping is one of the changes in Ohio law that resulted from the problems in Flint, Mich., and Sebring in 2015 and early 2016 regarding notification of the public about lead levels that exceeded federal limits in the drinking water in both locations.

In both cases, months went by after the high lead levels were detected but before the public was notified to take precautions.

Health officials say lead can cause serious health problems, especially for pregnant women, infants and children. Because of concerns about it, lead-based paint was banned in 1977, and leaded gas was phased out in 1986.

A state law that took effect in September reduced the amount of time water officials have to notify the public from 30 days to two. The mapping that was included in the law also is intended to help the public avoid exposure to lead.

Lucarelli said the map his department produced relied in some cases on handwritten water permit records and maps, some dating back more than 100 years.

Those records cannot be trusted to be 100 percent correct because some homeowners may have replaced lead lines without telling the city, Lucarelli said.

But the map does tell what areas of the city were built before 1950, when lead lines were being used, and which areas were built after 1950, when lead lines started being phased out in favor of steel and other materials.

Lucarelli said his meter readers and other employees have been trained to perform a fairly simple check of the service line in homes where they visit. A lead line will turn shiny when scraped, Lucarelli said.

Data on the type of line in a home is being shared with the property owner or renter, and residents with a lead line are being advised of ways to protect themselves, such as letting the water run for 30 seconds to two minutes first thing in the morning before consuming the water. That is to flush out lead that may have collected in the line overnight, Lucarelli said.

Employees also are instructed to report the type of line to the water department so that the city’s records will be as accurate as possible.

Lucarelli said he will notify the news media when the map is ready so the media can provide it to the public.