GALESBURG, Illinois – This railroad town promotes its ties to Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and the poet Carl Sandburg. But Galesburg’s long history also shows in a hidden way: Aging pipes have leaked lead into the drinking water for decades.
Blood tests show cause for concern. One in 20 children younger than 6 in Knox County had lead levels exceeding the state standard for public health intervention, a rate six times higher than the Illinois average, in 2014.
Galesburg offers just one example of how the problem of lead-tainted drinking water goes far beyond Flint, Michigan, the former auto manufacturing center where the issue exploded into a public health emergency when the city’s entire water system was declared unsafe.
An Associated Press analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data found that nearly 1,400 water systems serving 3.6 million Americans exceeded the federal lead standard at least once between Jan. 1, 2013, and Sept. 30, 2015. The affected systems are large and small, public and private, and include 278 systems that are owned and operated by schools and day care centers in 41 states.
Galesburg officials downplay the water’s potential contribution to lead poisoning, which can affect children’s mental development.
“Most people in Galesburg are not really being told that there is a problem,” said city council member Peter Schwartzman, an environmental scientist who called the AP’s findings alarming. “I’m very close to this and didn’t know it. I feel ignorant.”
The AP reviewed 25 years of sampling data reported by 75,000 drinking water systems that are subject to a federal lead rule that took effect in 1991. Details of the EPA data were first reported by USA Today.
While no amount of lead exposure is considered safe, the rule calls for water systems to keep levels below 15 parts per billion.
If more than 10 percent of sampled high-risk homes are above that level, water agencies must inform customers about the problem and take steps such as adding chemicals to control corrosion and prevent leaching of the lead.
In Galesburg, a community of 31,000 about 200 miles southwest of Chicago, lead levels have exceeded the federal standard in 22 out of 30 testing periods since 1992. City officials say their groundwater and water mains are lead-free, but the toxin enters the supply in service lines that deliver water from the streets to 4,700 homes. Lead-based plumbing fixtures that were common in homes built before 1980 also contribute.
Critics say the current rule has not done enough to protect public health or to inform individual homeowners about risks. Dozens of systems have exceeded the standard 10 times or more in the last quarter-century, including in Portland, Oregon, and Providence, Rhode Island, the data show.
In a statement, the EPA said events in Flint and elsewhere have raised questions about how the lead rule has been implemented. The agency is considering changes and urging state water regulators in the meantime to improve lead monitoring.
But the ultimate solution is expensive: It will take billions of dollars to replace millions of miles of lead service lines throughout the country. Those are the lines that connect water mains to homes, schools and businesses, remnants from a time when scientists didn’t understand the dangers caused by lead.
Water operators sought to distance their systems from the situation in Flint, saying they were taking actions to reduce lead.
“We try to minimize it, whatever our contribution is” to childhood lead poisoning, said Joseph Bella, executive director of the Passaic Valley Water Commission in New Jersey, which has repeatedly exceeded the standard.
Lead problems have been particularly persistent in Massachusetts communities outside Boston such as Malden, Winthrop and Chelsea, which have repeatedly exceeded the limit. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which serves those cities, announced a program this month to make $100 million available in interest-free loans to replace lead service lines.
Several schools have restricted access to their water amid lead concerns.
“The kids are not exposed to it other than hand-washing,” said Sandra Porter, who manages the water system at Ava Head Start in West Plains, Missouri, where a 2014 test revealed lead levels more than four times the federal standard.
The crisis in Flint, where residents have been without tap water for months, has highlighted how tainted water can poison children. Even low levels have been shown to affect IQ, the ability to pay attention and academic achievement.
Children age 6 and younger and pregnant women – whose bones pass along stored lead to infants – are considered the most vulnerable to lead, which can also damage brains, kidneys and production of red blood cells that supply oxygen.
