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Regional EPA Office
Decided No Federal Action Was Needed.
by Carol D. Leonnig and D'Vera Cohn, Washington Post, March 16,
2004
Federal authorities responsible for ensuring the safety of
Washington's water knew about the toxic levels of lead and the likely
solution more than a year ago but took no action, according to records
and interviews.
On Nov. 21, 2002, a staff member in the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency's regional office in Philadelphia told his supervisors in
writing that "fast action" might be needed to solve the lead
contamination problem in the water.
The alarm, sounded by an EPA liaison to the District, was based on
test results received a few months earlier that confirmed unsafe
amounts of lead in the District's tap water. On Nov. 26, the EPA
staffer also e-mailed the D.C Department of Health about the public
health risk, according to a copy of the correspondence, but there are
no indications that local officials followed up.
EPA officials exchanged memos on the lead problem over the next few
months and ultimately decided they would revisit the issue with the
Washington Aqueduct, which supplies the water and is owned by the Army
Corps of Engineers. According to an EPA briefing paper written in
January 2003, regulators discussed the costs associated with
controlling lead leaching and objections raised by the Corps of
Engineers and the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.
Regional officials at the EPA also determined that WASA, which
distributes the water, was properly informing the public and complying
with all regulations. No federal action was needed, according to the
briefing paper.
The contamination detected in 2002 appeared to prove what consultants
had been warning since 1994: that the treatment used by the Washington
Aqueduct was making the water corrosive and could be detrimental in a
city with a large number of lead pipes. But the EPA's Region III
office in Philadelphia, which oversees the District's water supply,
consistently deferred to WASA and the aqueduct on treating the water
and handling the problem.
"We were dealing with it as a compliance issue," acknowledged Jonathan
Capacasa, director of water quality for EPA Region III. "In hindsight,
we missed some opportunities . . . to engage earlier."
City Administrator Robert C. Bobb, who was hired last year, said it is
"unacceptable" that the D.C. Health Department appeared to receive a
notice in 2002 and did not act to alert the mayor and the public.
"We should have pulled people in and find out what does this mean for
the residents of the District of Columbia," he said. "If I had known
this, everybody who had a hand in this issue would have been around my
conference table within a matter of days."
Local officials and experts on lead say the EPA's decisions have had
broad consequences. More than 1 million residents relied on a water
supply that for at least two years showed unsafe levels of lead.
Corrosive water may have harmed pipes in thousands of homes. Experts
looking at new treatments predict that solving the problem now will
prove more complicated.
"In fairness, the best minds were trying to make the best decisions at
the time," Capacasa said. "We're all working feverishly now to solve
the problem and correct it."
Jonathan Clement, an EPA consultant, concluded in 1997 that there were
only "two viable treatment strategies" for the Washington Aqueduct to
mitigate lead contamination, according to his report. Both were aimed
at reducing the corrosive power of the water, which could leach lead
from pipes.
The first choice was to sharply increase the water's pH level, a
measure of acidity, to about 9.0. The second was to maintain the pH in
the 7.4 to 7.8 range and begin using a chemical additive called
orthophosphate.
Thomas P. Jacobus, the manager of the Washington Aqueduct, said he
objected to both options. He said adding phosphates would cost the
aqueduct and WASA more money when the water and sewage were treated.
He also argued that the higher levels of pH would leave calcium
deposits on machinery and create a maintenance problem.
In July 2000, George Rizzo, the EPA Region III official in charge of
the District's drinking water, verbally approved the aqueduct's
position. The Corps of Engineers could keep the pH in the lower range
of 7.4 to 7.8 but without adding the orthophosphate. Rizzo confirmed
his earlier approval in a letter dated May 2002 and sent to Jacobus.
Water quality experts who are now part of a task force studying the
lead contamination believe the lower pH -- along with another change
in the chemicals used to treat the water -- combined to trigger the
current problem, according to government officials familiar with their
work.
By the summer of 2002, lead levels in the city's water had reached 75
parts per billion, as measured by the EPA, five times the level
considered safe. In November that year, the EPA's liaison to the
District, Chris Ball, sent an e-mail to a colleague about trying to
alert his supervisor, Capacasa, to the D.C. lead threat.
"Got through to Jon C on the drinking water issue," Ball wrote. "It
was news to him and he is looking into what's going on now. He agreed
that if it appears to be a real problem, fast action by EPA would be
key. . . ."
A few days later, Region III staff members prepared a memo explaining
that the spike in D.C. lead levels was a sure sign that the water was
corroding pipes and fixtures. In it, the EPA surmised that the
aqueduct's new chemical to treat bacteria, chloramines, was a likely
cause.
Chloramines "may also leave the pipe interiors more susceptible to
corrosion," the memo said. "EPA will work with the Aqueduct to revisit
corrosion control treatment options."
According to a copy of a Nov. 26, 2002, e-mail, Ball wrote to Ted
Gordon, deputy director of the D.C. Department of Health, and one of
his assistants and alerted them to the high lead levels and offered
help in advising residents.
"Ted{ndash}As you likely know already, recent tests of DC tap water .
. . have exceeded" the federal level for lead in water, he wrote.
"There are obviously difficult public health questions to be answered.
. . . Please let me know if I [sic] EPA can be of any assistance to
your agency as you continue to work to protect the public health."
Gordon has previously said he was never alerted to the lead problem
and learned about it only from the media Jan. 31. In an interview last
week, he said he has no record of receiving Ball's e-mail and does not
recall any notice sounding an alarm.
"And if EPA thought it was such a big problem that they had to write
to me, why the heck didn't they fix it?" Gordon said.
The next day, Ball wrote to Rizzo that WASA needed to "unbury" the
mention of lead problems on its Web site "if they really want to make
the information accessible." He said he had struggled to find it: "I
can only imagine the problems other DC residents may have in
downloading it."
On Jan. 8, 2003, Rizzo and his supervisor, Rick Rogers, briefed the
EPA regional administrator, Don Welsh, for about 10 minutes on the
D.C. lead problem. According to his written notes for the
presentation, Rizzo stressed that WASA's high lead levels were not a
legal violation and that the utility was complying with the law by
announcing the problem and alerting "consumers how they can protect
themselves from exposure to lead in drinking water."
Rizzo also warned that trying to control the lead corrosion by adding
phosphates, as experts recommended, had a downside. WASA and the two
Northern Virginia jurisdictions it serves, Falls Church and Arlington,
opposed adding phosphates because they would increase the cost of
treating sewage and could be discharged into the Chesapeake Bay.
"Consideration must be given to its effect on the other customers of
the Washington Aqueduct and the waste water stream to Blue Plains,"
Rizzo wrote.
When the next WASA tests came into the EPA's office in late October
2003, they revealed that more than 4,000 homes in the District had
unsafe levels of lead in the water. The EPA office then hired
consultants to study "if a more effective corrosion control treatment
might be implemented."
On Feb. 9, 2004, 10 days after news of the lead contamination broke,
EPA officials met with managers from WASA and the aqueduct,
established a working group and ordered an extensive laboratory
analysis. The goal: to find a new treatment by May that will make the
water less corrosive and stop lead from leaching into the water. One
of the options is to add phosphates, as experts urged years ago.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said last week that he believes the EPA,
along with the aqueduct, helped created the lead crisis and now must
help pay for the solution. No estimate has been provided.
"They need to tell us when they plan to correct the corrosion that is
causing this problem," Williams said. "More and more it appears this
is the result of actions taken and decisions made by the federal
agencies."
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