Many people choose not to drink the water in New Orleans. Luckily, Greg Doolittle, a Bywater resident, was already drinking bottled water when he learned that he has incredibly high levels of lead in his tap water: 70 parts per million, seven times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new action level.
“My test results indicate that I have lead pipes in my house, which didn't come up in my home inspection, so that's been a little bit of a mystery to me,” he said.
There are no safe levels of lead in drinking water. Exposure to lead can cause irreversible damage to health, especially for children. The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans tested the water in 144 New Orleans homes and found that 88% of them tested positive for lead. Eleven of those exceeded the EPA’s action level, which at the time of the study was 15 parts per million. Doolittle’s house was one of them.
“Come to today to actually read the study, I have the highest sample [out of the houses tested] in the city, so lucky me,” he said.
Doolittle reached out to the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans who will do their own testing on his home’s service line and have offered to replace it should it find lead. It’s part of the utility’s plan to achieve full lead line replacement. Earlier last week, the EPA released its Lead and Copper Rule Improvements. These lowered the action level from 15 parts per million to 10 parts per million and required drinking water systems to identify and replace lead lines within 10 years starting in 2027. Ghassan Korban, executive director of SWBNO said the utility will be starting early.
The Water Collaborative's findings are concerning, but the study has its limitations. The sample size is small and does not represent the demographics of the city accurately. However, the results are consistent with the lead testing work of Adrienne Katner, a professor at LSU-Health School of Public Health.
"I tested over 400 homes throughout the New Orleans area. A lot of our results just concur with each other," she said. "It was very rare for me not to find a house with lead in water."
SWBNO released its inventory of the lead lines in the city last Friday where residents can look up their address and see if it is serviced by lead pipes. The inventory was created using a predictive model that was fed data from plumbing records, lead test kit results, meter installation dates, parcel data and census records. There are over 15,000 households currently serviced by lead pipes. The status of even more, about 119,000 households, is unknown.
“While all of this is a great start, it's only the beginning. The work is not done. There's still so much that we don't know,” said Rebecca Malpass, the Water Collaborative’s director of policy and research.
Korban said the unknown pipes will be treated as if they are lead until proven otherwise. Starting in November, SWBNO will search for a contractor to handle the lead pipe replacement. In the meantime, it will issue a smaller contract to start inspecting schools and replacing 800 lead service lines on the public side. Eventually, Korban said it will be able to replace service lines on private property as well.
“Ultimately, obviously, our goal is to remove every single lead line out of the ground, whether it's on our side of the meter, the public side, or the private side,” said Korban. “The EPA has made it clear that the funding that they had made available to us can be used for removing the private portion of the line.”
The funding comes from the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and is distributed through the state’s Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund. Louisiana received over $105 million in grants from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for drinking water. SWBNO has already secured $86 million and has applied for an additional $66 million. 49% of that money is given as a grant and the rest is a zero-interest loan that the utility will have to pay back. Korban said the replacement will not affect customers’ rates.
“It's all baked into our current revenue and projected revenues for the year,” said Korban.
He added however, those are not enough to replace all the service lines. SWBNO will search for additional funding as it tries to hit the 2037 deadline.
In the meantime, SWBNO encourages residents to rely on filters that have been certified by the American National Standards Institute. Customers can also request one from SWBNO.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include the limitations of the Water Collaborative's study.
