“In order for something like this to happen, there has to be a lot of missteps. It isn’t something that one person makes happen overnight,” said Chris Moore, service director for the City of Springfield.
The city runs a water treatment plant on Eagle City Road that distributes water to city residents and many Clark County residents. Some municipalities have their own water systems, including New Carlisle and Enon.
Each system is required to publish a Consumer Confidence Report every year detailing contaminants in the drinking water. A review of those reports for Clark County public water systems found average lead detection of about 5 parts per billion or less across the county. That’s well below the maximum allowable level of 15 parts per billion.
There are lead pipes throughout local distribution systems, and many homes have lead in the plumbing, but as long as the public water system is doing its job of treating the water, it shouldn’t be leaching any of that lead into what you drink, local experts said.
In Flint, the city switched water sources and didn’t properly adjust how they were treating the water.
“The chemical composition of the water was corrosive and it ate away at some of the natural scaling that happens inside of a water line. (Scaling) is buildup… and it takes time to get that back,” Moore said.
The switching of water sources shouldn’t be taken lightly, he said.
“We’ve been drawing from the same source since the ’50s. You know the makeup of that water, you know the chemistry. If you start to see any little changes in the chemistry of the water it would give you cause for concern,” he said.
Comparing Springfield to what Flint did, it would be like the city stopped drawing water from the Mad River Valley Buried Aquifer and starting drawing from a completely different source, like the river itself, and didn’t adjust that chemistry properly. The pH and hardness of the water would be thrown off, Moore said.
“I just don’t understand how it could even have happened,” Urbana Water Supervisor Bob Munch said. Water treatment operators are supposed to have a knowledge of chemistry that would not let that issue occur.
It’s such a rare situation to have lead contamination from drinking water that Ohio’s Lead Safe program doesn’t do much testing for it, according to Clark County Health Commissioner Charles Patterson, who used to work with the state program.
During thousands of investigations into children who tested positive for elevated blood lead levels, he’s never found an instance of water being the source. Lead paint in old homes is the main culprit, one the city and state are still working to combat through increased testing and home abatement programs.
“We have not experienced evidence that lead is being introduced through pipes,” said Shannon Meadows, director of the community development department for the city, which runs the Lead Safe Springfield program.
Testing done throughout system
Local water is tested at multiple points, from the raw water pulled from the ground, to what goes out of the treatment plant and what comes out of faucets in the community.
“We do about a thousand samples a year throughout the system,” Moore said.
If a community maintains low lead readings, it is only required to test at the home level every three years. Springfield did its last round of testing in 2014 with about 30 homes participating. The average detection was 4.2 parts per billion.
Urbana did its three-year tests in 2015 and had levels at about 5 ppb, with just one home testing above 15 ppb.
If residents are concerned about the lead content of water in their home, the Clark County Combined Health District will provide supplies and instructions on how to collect the water and send it for analysis for $16.
The turnaround time is about two weeks.
Patterson said elevated lead levels are rarely found during these home tests, but its recommended if there are young children or a pregnant woman living in the house as they are the most vulnerable to the effects of lead exposure.
County officials also urge well owners to test their private wells regularly.
“For homes with children or pregnant women and with water lead levels exceeding U.S. EPA’s action level of 15 ppb, CDC recommends using bottled water or water from a filtration system that has been certified by an independent testing organization to reduce or eliminate lead for cooking, drinking, and baby formula preparation,” Ohio Department of Health Communications Director Russ Kennedy said.
Anyone can take extra precautions to minimize exposure to lead in their water by running the tap for 30 seconds or more the first time it is turned on after an extended period. Letting it run until it reaches its coldest temperature will clear water that may have sat in lead pipes overnight, Kennedy said.
“Use only cold tap water for drinking and cooking since warm or hot tap water can contain much higher levels of lead — and boiling water will not reduce the amount of lead,” he said.
No lead advisories in area
State and federal agencies all agree on the "action level" of 15 parts per billion. If water from a public system tests at or above that level, an advisory is supposed to be issued and residents alerted so they can take precautions.
Lack of notification is one of the issues that led to the Flint crisis and that has caused an emergency in Sebring. Five children there were found to have elevated blood lead levels after residents learned the village hadn’t disclosed for months that dangerous lead levels were found.
The Ohio EPA maintains a list of all active drinking water advisories in the state, which can be for elevated levels of any number of contaminants including lead, copper, nitrates and bacteria.
They can issue advisories for community water systems as well as for more specific locations like schools, churches or campgrounds that are experiencing isolated problems in private wells, but that could impact public health.
For example, two churches in Clark County have been under boil advisories for bacterial issues in their private water supplies since last year.
Christian Heritage Church on Victory Road was issued an advisory on Oct. 18 and Cornerstone Church of God on July 22.
Greenlawn Village Condos in Springfield has been under an advisory for high arsenic levels since 2013 following previous advisories in 2011 and 2012. A representative from the condo association could not be reached for comment, but Patterson said the residents there have been aware of the problem for years and there is work underway to install a new filtration system that should fix the issue.
In Champaign County, the Valley View Mobile Home Park had an advisory for high nitrate levels up until last week, but they installed a new well in fall and samples in December and January confirmed levels are now safe, according to the Ohio EPA.
There are no active lead advisories in Clark or Champaign counties.
Emergencies lead to mistrust
Although the situations in Flint and Sebring are unlikely to be repeated locally, they’ve been a wake-up call for some about the responsiveness of the government agencies meant to protect people.
"The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and (U.S. EPA) Region 5, let the people of Flint just be sacrificed," said Marilyn Welker, president of People for Safe Water, a community group in Springfield working to get hazardous waste cleaned up at the Tremont City Barrel Fill.
Region 5 of the EPA covers both Michigan and Ohio, and Administrator Susan Hedman has announced her resignation in the wake of the Flint disaster.
The situation reaffirms mistrust the community group has had of the EPA.
“The EPA plans to rebury untreated hazardous waste,” Welker said. It’s part of a plan by the federal government to shore up the barrel fill site by removing both solid and liquid waste, installing a double liner to protect the underground aquifer that feeds the area’s water supply, then reburying the solid waste.
Just like the EPA told the people of Flint that things were fine, People for Safe Water fears the agency is telling them his cheaper solution will be OK.
“That’s why we don’t trust them,” Welker said.
There is about a $20 million difference between the U.S. EPA’s plan and a more intensive solution backed by the Ohio EPA and the community group.
That may seem like a lot, Welker said, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the cost Michigan is now going to endure.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed a $28 million spending bill Friday to address Flint’s water emergency. That followed $80 million in federal funds steered to Michigan by President Barack Obama to help repair Flint’s water infrastructure.
“That’s the difference between doing it right and doing a stop gap measure,” Welker said, of the increased spending that followed an attempt to save money.
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