Sebring water crisis a year ago forced changes at the state level

Opinion: January 22, 2017 at 12:00a.m.

By Rep. JOHN BOCCIERI

Exactly one year ago this weekend, residents of the Village of Sebring were first notified that the water they had been drinking for the past five months was contaminated with lead. Despite a state lab report from August 2015 showing elevated, unsafe levels of lead in water samples, authorities had done little to inform the public of the serious risk to their health. What followed was a disturbing sequence of state and local authorities fumbling their responsibility and failing to act on what became a serious threat to public safety and health.

WIDESPREAD PROBLEM

Communities across the country are all at risk of this same scenario, yet very few of them even realize it. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency confirmed that most of our underground water infrastructure is over 50 years old, crumbling and corroded with lead. Many older cities play host to water mains that date back as far as the early 1900s. Lead was a common ingredient in pipes then, and it’s not one that ages well with water.

Unfortunately, the effects of such outdated infrastructure have only recently come to light. A 2016 National Resources Defense Council study found that in 2015, 18 million people nationwide were drinking water from systems with lead violations. Over 1,100 systems had a lead exceedance above the federal safe standard of 15 parts per billion (ppb). In Mahoning County alone, we had a disturbingly high average lead concentration of 21 ppb from 2013 to 2015, which is attributed to Sebring’s water crisis. Whether it’s due to aging pipes or authorities distorting water tests, evidence shows that almost every major city east of the Mississippi River could be serving up lead-tainted water as we speak.

Reflecting on what happened to our community one year ago, I believe that the effort to respond to this growing problem should be a shared responsibility among water operators, communities and all levels of government. Although the massive scale of this problem is daunting, there are necessary steps that each party involved has an obligation to take to collectively, effectively and efficiently address this crisis for the sake of public health and safety.

First, water authorities need to move with urgency to properly test water and report necessary contaminations. The EPA’s database shows a massive underreporting of violations due to monitoring methods that purposely avoid detecting contamination or blatant failures to report discovered violations – as was the case in Flint, Mich. House Bill (HB) 512 from last year, which went into effect in September, will address the need for better reporting by requiring communities to map where their lead pipes are and follow new rules to test for lead and copper in water supplies.

Second, all levels of government need to prioritize investment in updated, reliable water infrastructure for the entire country. I recognize that this is not a small task. According to NRDC, at least 6 million lead service lines (the lines from a resident’s mailbox to their home) nationwide are in need of outright replacement, and bringing the full grid up to standards within the next 25 years would cost over $1 trillion. However, you can’t put a price tag on public health and safety, and the U. S. spent triple that amount on wars over the last 16 years. The recent $60 million congressional allocation for loans to communities for lead service line replacement and related projects is incredibly helpful, but present funding still doesn’t come close to matching the level of need.

On the state level, I’m proud to say Ohio took the lead last year with HB 512. This bill not only established the shortest public notification timeline for cases of contamination, but it set up a decent financial support system for water-quality monitoring. It also expanded allowable uses for state funds to accommodate corrosion control, wastewater treatment and other activities in addition to making it easier for projects to qualify for funding. However, looking forward, we must make a commitment to establish consistent appropriations for infrastructure construction, repair and support that will guarantee our children and families have safe, reliable drinking water each and every day.

Raising standards

I am proud of the efforts my colleagues and I have championed in the Ohio House to raise the standards for our state’s drinking water, and the water crisis in Sebring was the impetus for much of that change. But it is no longer enough just to respond to these crises with retroactive fixes. We need to refocus our approach to be proactive, investing in full-scale infrastructure improvements that will prevent lead contamination from becoming an issue and better eliminate the risk of exposure to our citizens. These infrastructure challenges are a problem that – if left unsolved – will threaten our very way of life. With that at stake, bold action is required from all of us.

Democratic State Rep. John Boccieri of Poland represents Ohio’s 59th District, which includes Sebring.