Iowa City providing resources for reducing lead in water

IOWA CITY — Iowa City has announced a new lead reduction program that will provide resources for home and business owners to reduce the lead in their water supply by updating old plumbing and water fixtures.

The program, announced earlier this month, is mostly focused on educating community members about the possibility of lead in their water, and what to do about it, according to Jon Durst, Iowa City water superintendent.

“The first thing, on the public education side, is for folks to understand where the sources of lead are, and there’s quite a variety. It’s from lead paints to contaminated soils, from old leaded gasoline to lead materials used in home plumbing. We’re just focused on that water side of things for this particular lead reduction program,” Durst said.

Reducing lead in the water in individual homes is difficult, because while the city controls the piping and materials used in the public water supply, the individually owned pipes that bring the water from the public supply to houses are the responsibility of homeowners, Durst said. And since many homes were built before federal legislation changed what alloys can be used in plumbing, there are still a lot of homes with lead in the pipes, according to Durst.

As part of the new program, the city water division looked through public records for every property in the city to find out what they could about the makeup of each house’s plumbing. They used this information to create a map, which can be found online, that shows which properties are served by fully lead pipes, which properties have lead as part of the construction of the pipes, which properties have lead upstream of their pipes and which properties don’t have lead. They’ve also marked some properties as unknown, if there weren’t enough public documents to determine the lead content.

The city is encouraging home and business owners to look at the map, and to get their water tested for lead if they are concerned about lead content. Lead testing is offered for free through the city water division, or through Get the Lead Out, a University of Iowa research program that tests drinking water across the state.

“Sometimes you can find that even though maybe a customer has lead potential or known leaded components, they may not have lead in their drinking water simply because we manage the chemistry, so it doesn’t release that lead in their plumbing,” Durst said. “Testing helps people understand the risks and create a plan for themselves in terms of, do I need to take an action at this point? Do I need to be more informed? Do I want to plan for an eventual replacement of some fixture or service line, now knowing what I know?”

The city has established a cost-share program to help home and business owners pay for upgrades to plumbing if necessary to reduce lead content in water. The city will help cover 50 percent, up to $5,000, of the cost of replacing verified lead water service pipes. There also are opportunities to cost share on other upgrades, but Durst said it’s on a first-come, first-served basis, as the water division has a limited budget for the cost share.

Other facets of the lead-reduction program include a partnership between the city and Service Line Warranties of America to encourage community members to purchase insurance for their homes’ water and sewer service pipes, and a change to a city ordinance that requires any broken lead or lead-contaminated service pipes be fully replaced rather than repaired.

These changes are a response to recent changes to the federal Lead and Copper Rule. Changes were made to the 1991 rule under the Trump administration, and another proposed revision was announced last week by the Biden administration. The changes will go into effect in 2024.

The changes “are quite substantial in their scope and I expect over the next three years there will be even more changes to Iowa City’s approach to getting residents to opt into removing lead water service pipes,” Durst said.

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Health risks of lead

University of Iowa researchers working on the Get the Lead Out program, estimate that between 50,000 and 80,000 people are exposed to elevated lead concentrations in Iowa every year.

According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, 981 children in Iowa under 6 had a confirmed elevated blood lead level in 2019.

When people are exposed to large amounts of lead, it can be carried in the bloodstream and harm the brain and the nervous system. It doesn’t leave the body through excretion but is absorbed by bones, teeth and organs, according to the Get the Lead Out website.

Lead in the body can cause learning disabilities and behavioral problems, and at very high levels it can cause seizures, coma and death, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health. Young children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, as the first six years of life are when the brain grows the fastest and connections between the brain and nervous system are being established. Lead can also be harmful to pregnant and nursing mothers and their babies.

“No safe level of lead exposure has been identified,” the Iowa DPH website states.

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