Lead levels watched

Water is a hungry beast. "It wants to dissolve whatever it comes in contact with," said Jeffrey Twitchell, vice president of Air and Water Quality Inc. in Freeport.

Water's corrosive power is determined by how acidic it is. The lower the pH (potential for Hydrogen) level in the water, the easier it is for the water to eat away at the pipes it flows through.

But water carries with it what it consumes. Sometimes, that can include harmful deposits of lead.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to lead through drinking water is relatively uncommon. The greatest exposure to lead comes from swallowing or breathing in lead paint chips and dust.

But in the world of water contamination, lead, copper and other metals that leak into water from corroded pipes happen all too often.

"It's common enough that you see them both frequently," said Tim Bishop, a chemist for the Maine Health Environmental Lab in Augusta, which tests 20,000 to 30,000 water samples annually from private homes and businesses, to public buildings and water districts.

"Certainly, there's no cause for alarm," Bishop said, because deposits of lead usually fall below dangerous levels.

Late last month, residents of Lakehurst Acres were told by their management agency that they should see a doctor after water tests indicated that lead levels were more than 100 times higher than federal limits.

"This is really kind of new territory," said Carlton Gardner, compliance and enforcement team leader for the Maine Drinking Water Program with the Department of Health and Human Services. "We haven't seen these types of levels in any of the other systems that we know of."

The program monitors about 800 public drinking supplies in Maine. Nearly 200 of those sites are filled with corroding pipes and, as a result, are supplied with equipment that keeps pH levels in check.

Lead is rarely found in source water -- springs, lakes and rivers -- but enters tap water through the corrosion of plumbing materials.

By the 1920s, most pipes installed for water distribution were made of iron, at least in part because lead was known to seriously contaminate drinking-water supplies.

But lead solder was used well into the 1980s to seal water pipes. The Lakehurst Acres property was built sometime near 1980.

For Lakehurst, the increased lead levels were detected after the property managers installed a filtration system to help eliminate arsenic, Gardner said. Arsenic flows naturally in the ground water of that area of Pond Road, he said, and Lakehurst's drinking water comes from a well.

After the installation of the arsenic control equipment, the water grew more acidic and began to eat away at the water pipes.

"Nobody else has ever heard of this," Carlton said of the state and federal environmental agencies he has contacted.

Before May, Lakehurst Acres had normal levels of lead, so it is confusing to think that installation of a filter system would cause such a spike.

Lead in drinking water should not exceed 15 parts per billion. But water from homes tested in Lakehurst reached into the hundreds and thousands of parts per billion, with one of the highest readings hitting 1,600 parts per billion, prompting the estimated 40 people who live their to get blood tests.

In babies and children, excessive exposure to lead can result in delays in physical and mental development, according to the EPA, along with slight deficits in attention span and learning abilities. In adults, it can cause increases in blood pressure. Adults who drink this water over many years could develop kidney problems or high blood pressure.

In 1978, there were nearly 3 million to 4 million children with elevated blood lead levels in the United States. By 2002, that number had dropped to 310,000 kids, and it continues to decline.

C&C Realty, an Augusta-based firm that manages 19 properties throughout the state, including Lakehurst Acres, said it will continue to provide residents with bottled water until lead levels return to normal.

This past week, nurses and volunteers from the Maine Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program were taking blood samples from residents who could not make it to a doctor.

On Friday, pH control equipment was installed by Freeport-based Air and Water Quality Inc. The equipment monitors water flow, and basically injects an acid-lowering lime dust to balance the pH levels.

"Most of the time, it solves the problem," said Twitchell, the company's vice president.

Lakehurst Acres should see results immediately, Twitchell said, but it may take a few weeks for the levels to balance.

"There's a whole host of contaminants out there," said Roger Crouse of the Maine Drinking Water Program. "Lead and copper is definitely one that takes a lot of our time."

In 2005, the EPA proposed changes to the nation's Lead and Copper Rule that urged water utilities to conduct stricter testing for lead in drinking water and to provide clearer warnings to the public.

The EPA said the changes reflected the lessons learned from the Washington D.C., district, where high levels of lead were detected in the drinking water beginning in 2002. Many residents and city officials did not learn of the extend of the problem until 2004, when The Washington Post reported that the drinking water in thousands of homes had excessive levels of lead.

The Post found that Philadelphia, Boston and other cities had thrown out water tests that produced high lead readings or had avoided testing homes most likely to have lead problems.

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