While performing research into premature pipe corrosion for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) in 2001, Marc Edwards, an expert in plumbing corrosion, discovered lead levels in the drinking water of Washington, D.C., at least 83 times higher than the accepted safe limit. He found that the decision to change from chlorine to chloramine as a treatment chemical had caused the spike in lead levels. The contamination has left thousands of children with lifelong health risks and led to a re-evaluation of the use of monochloramine in public drinking-water systems.
After the Washington Post ran a series of front-page articles about Edwards's findings, resulting in widespread public concern, the United States House of Representatives conducted an investigation. The House found that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had made "scientifically indefensible" claims in a report that had indicated there was no risk from the high lead levels. The Post investigation uncovered evidence of widespread misreporting of lead levels at water agencies across the United States, leading to regulatory crackdowns and changes in Environmental Protection Agency policies.
The problem was addressed in 2004 by adding additional treatments to the water, preventing the chloramine from dissolving lead in the water mains, solder joints, and plumbing fixtures.
In 2010, the CDC reported that 15,000 homes in the Washington, D.C., area might still have water supplies with dangerous levels of lead.
2001–2004: Initial reports of elevated lead In 2001, more than half the water samples taken from 53 D.C.-area homes under the procedures required by the EPA's Lead and Copper Rule showed levels of lead exceeding the national standard of 15 parts per billion (ppb). Lead disrupts the physical and mental development of fetuses, babies, and young children, and can cause kidney problems and high blood pressure in adults. The rule does not assume that there is a "safe" level of exposure, but notes that 15 ppb is an "action level" where utilities must take action. The rule was created in 1991, after research showed that drinking water could account for one-fifth of all lead intake. Lead is not normally present in drinking water; it is released from the inside surface of lead service lines (pipes that run from the main to the house), joints connected with lead-based solder, and lead fixtures inside the house. Based on these findings, WASA was required to notify the public and implement plans to replace lead service lines in key areas of the municipal water system.
The first media attention came in late 2002, when the Washington City Paper ran an article about a resident of American University Park whose water tested six to 18 times the EPA Lead and Copper Rule's action level. WASA found that homes in its service area with lead service lines averaged five times the EPA limit for lead during a year-long period. The results were unexpected; the EPA scientist overseeing D.C.'s water suggested that drought conditions might have raised the alkalinity levels of the Potomac River, leading to a change in the pH of the water. As a result, WASA was required to start replacing seven percent of the district's lead service lines each year until the levels dropped below 0.015 milligrams per liter. At the time, about 23,000 WASA customers had lead service lines.
In March 2003, Marc Edwards, a professor of civil engineering and expert on corrosion in drinking-water systems, was conducting research into an unexpected increase in pinhole leaks in copper water pipes in the D.C. area. WASA funded Edwards's research. Suspecting the leaks were caused by a change in the water chemistry, Edwards used a field meter to test for lead in one home's water. The meter could read values up to 140 ppb. His initial reading pegged the meter, so he diluted the sample to ten percent of its original strength. Even so, diluted, the sample still pegged the meter, indicating the water contained at least 1,250 ppb of lead. "Some of it would literally have to be classified as a hazardous waste," Edwards said.
After Seema Bhat, a water quality manager at WASA, told her superiors at the agency and at the EPA about the lead levels and warned that federal guidelines required aggressive action, she was fired by the agency. A federal investigator found that she had been improperly terminated.
The lead levels required WASA to conduct a wider survey of their water quality. By the fall of 2003, it had tested more than 6,000 homes in the District, finding that two-thirds tested had more than 15 ppb of lead in their water. The survey showed that over 4,000 homes served by WASA had lead levels exceeding the acceptable level. More than a third of the homes surveyed—2,287 out of 6,118—had levels exceeding 50 ppb. The water tested over 300 ppb in 157 homes. Despite this result, WASA did not notify its customers of the risk until November 2003.
Although regulations required WASA to include the specific warning "Some homes in this community have elevated lead levels in their drinking water. Lead can pose a significant risk to your health." In the water bills of each affected customer, WASA's notice omitted key parts of the phrase such as "in their drinking water" and "significant." Although Federal law required WASA to hold public meetings to discuss the problem and actions people could take to protect themselves, they advertised the meetings as being "to discuss and solicit public comments on WASA's Safe Drinking Water Act projects," omitting mention of lead. The EPA was required to review the notice before it was sent out; one D.C. Council member, commenting on the EPA's approval of the faulty notice, asked "Where were you, EPA?" The EPA later found that WASA's notice violated federal law because of the omissions.
In January 2004, the Washington Post reported that the mayor and several D.C. Council members had not been informed of the elevated lead levels. The Washington City Paper said that Carol Schwartz, the councilmember who chaired the Committee on Public Works and the Environment, was not informed of the lead issue until that newspaper contacted her during the last week of January 2004. Early communications from WASA limited the health advisory to pregnant women and small children in homes with lead service leads, but later tests showed the high lead levels were also present in homes with copper service leads.
Meanwhile, on January 2, 2004, WASA called Edwards and threatened to cut off his access to monitoring data needed for his research, and divert funding from him to other researchers, unless he stopped working with the homeowners whose water showed high lead levels. Soon after, the EPA discontinued its own contract with Edwards.
2004: Washington Post The issue became front-page news when the Washington Post ran an article titled "Water in D.C. Exceeds EPA Lead Limit" on January 31, 2004, across six columns of page A1. Reporter David Nakamura was contacted by one of the homeowners whose water was tested by WASA during its survey after he received the test results. Nakamura—who had no prior experience with clean water issues—initially thought it was a minor issue, but agreed to help the homeowner get a response from WASA. When WASA would not give him a straight answer, Nakamura pressed them for full data on the tests. Nakamura says that, even though he was "stunned" at the facts reported in that first story, the Post "had no idea about the size and scope of what was to follow."
The article quoted Erik Olson, an analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, as saying "This is a really big deal... If schools go over 20 parts per billion, they immediately take the water out of production." WASA recommended that residents let the tap run for 30 seconds to one minute before using it to reduce the risk.
This first Post article was the first public mention of the theory that the lead levels were tied to monochloramine. The traditional use of chlorine had been stopped four years earlier, out of concerns that it could produce harmful chemicals in the pipes. Long-term exposure to the byproducts from chlorine treatment has been linked with cancer. The paper quoted officials as saying that it was possible chloramine was more corrosive to lead pipes. (In fact, the Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for the Washington Aqueduct that supplies water to WASA, rejected a recommendation to add phosphates to the water to prevent lead leaching in the mid-1990s.) The change to chloramine was made after the EPA issued regulations concerning disinfection byproducts formed when chlorine reacts with organic matter in drinking water; the EPA considered these byproducts to be a potential health threat.
After the first article, the Post formed a core team of reporters to investigate the issue. Nakamura was joined by reporters Carol Leonnig, Jo Becker, Avram Goldstein, and D'Vera Cohn; editor Marcia Slacum Greene provided daily oversight. Nakamura was the lead reporter for the breaking news coming from WASA and City Hall, and wrote profiles of key players. Leonnig reported on the federal and EPA response to the contamination. Cohn investigated the Washington Aqueduct angle and worked with water quality and environmental experts. Goldstein covered the DC Department of Health. Becker looked at water quality nationwide.
After the first article appeared, residents inundated WASA's water hotline with calls and overwhelmed water testing laboratories with requests to have their tap water tested for lead contamination. District elected officials immediately called for an emergency public meeting, and established an inter-agency task force with the EPA to investigate and manage the problem. However, messages to the public at the time were often confusing and contradictory: while WASA was suggesting running taps for 90 seconds to flush out any lead, the EPA was demanding that recommendation be changed to ten minutes.
The Post article lead WASA to hand out over 30,000 free water filters, hire health experts, and offer free blood tests to residents. Some water fountains were turned off due to lead levels. In 2004, the D.C. Council held 11 oversight hearings on the issue; the U.S. Congress held four. American University claimed that its water was safe to drink, because the larger water mains feeding commercial sites like the college were not made of lead.
After Nakamura's first few stories for the Post on the issue, he was contacted by Seema Bhat's attorney. Bhat, who was then fighting her dismissal from WASA, shared thousands of internal documents with Nakamura. The documents, Nakamura said, "provided a fairly clear picture" that WASA had been trying to find a way to avoid the cost of replacing pipes and adding additional chemicals to the water. He said Bhat's documents were critical to the Post'''s investigation. He recalls that, while reading the documents, the team found WASA memos indicating that they tried to find "clean" houses to test to reduce the apparent average lead level from the testing, but the more they tested, the more "dirty" houses they found.
By April 2004, there were reports of some D.C.-area homes reaching lead levels of 6,000 ppb to 48,000 ppb.
In June 2004, the EPA cited WASA for a "serious breach" of the law, including withholding six test results showing high lead levels in 2001, dropping half of the homes that had previously tested high for lead levels in subsequent testing, and avoiding homes known to be at high risk for contamination. In July, a WASA-commissioned report supported the Posts claims that the agency had known about the high lead levels for years, but had failed to notify regulators or the public.