Lead Ed for Lud Lords

[XLFD]

At the last two council meetings, I brought up the recent lead testing results from the Ludington Area School District (LASD), and its correlation with a couple of other factual results:  that Mason County (with the City of Ludington as its primary water supplier) has finished first or second among Michigan Counties (which include much-maligned for leaded water Genessee County-- home of Flint) for young children with high blood lead levels, and that John Shay has lied about the mandated test results.

When you consider that since Shay took the reigns of Ludington government in 2003 until he was forced into recent upgrades of the water (WTP) and wastewater plants (WWTP) by the state, that the only real work he had done with these utilities were to arrange for painting the water towers and tanks, at a very prohibitively high rate and well before they needed to be painted. 

Meanwhile, he ignored the cleanup of two different multiple million gallon raw sewage spills into recreational waters in the center of town in 2008 and 2012, allowed the discharge permit for the WWTP to lapse in 2011 and to operate provisionally since, and oversaw over two months (April/May/June 2016) of excessive sewage smells emanating from the WWTP that could be smelled miles away.  This record inspires little confidence, especially since most has been done in a less than transparent matter over that period.

But some still take up the cause for John Shay, among the most outspoken are city councilors, who are the only people who can discipline or fire Shay.  One could say the councilors have a vested interest in making Shay look good, for if he is found to be either incompetent, apathetic, or corrupted, they don't look good for hiring him.  Will a good boss chide their errant worker in front of the public?  No, they will wait until they are out of the public's eye and then tell them what they did wrong.

At the December 5th, 2016 meeting I made a simple request in my opening comment:  "I invite and insist that if John Shay or anybody else in the city's water department wants to claim otherwise, to publicly state that all of the supply lines that the city owns are definitely lead-free, and support that statement with documentation." 

At the meeting, and a week after this, I have had nobody from the city make the declaration of having only lead-free pipes on the supply lines, and there is good reason for this.  In America, totally lead pipes were still used for supply lines up until about 1950, while lead-based solder continued to be used in copper lines up until 1986.  The vast majority of Ludington's water mains and water supply lines were installed before 1986, while very significant portions of those lines have not been disturbed since 1950. 

If the city has documentation of what materials they used for their pipes when they initially installed them they are definitely in a minority, and they surely are not showing the public those records.  Provided somebody in the city tries to declare their lines are lead-free and offers incomplete or no documentation, all anybody needs to disprove them is to find one lead pipe or lead-soldered copper pipe.  For this reason, they will be wise not to make this claim, as they would be proven to be lying once again.  Sadly, they won't admit the converse.

At the November 28, 2016 meeting, Councilor Winczewski made a statement that was rather odd.  In summation of the scientific results of the City's and the Ludington School's lead tests which showed lead in the city's water at multiple sites, she inferred that it was pretty obvious there is no lead in the city's water, just like John Shay had done earlier this year.

At the 44:20 point of the December 5th meeting, she decided to add some bigger claims to prove her point, claims that invited further investigation, five of which I point out as noteworthy:

"I would just like to comment on Mr. Rotta's comments about lead in the water.  Tom, if there is any lead coming out from our water treatment plant it is extremely small. 

We do measure households in the city of Ludington for lead under the DEQ's mandate that we do that.  We test those and this is really a question of education (1).

Within people's homes, they may have some-- you can still buy faucets with lead, made in China, because Lowe's showed me some of those faucets, you can buy those (2).

There are still people who have lead pipes in their homes, while maybe not lead pipes, they may still have lead pipes, the city, as far as we know, there's no lead pipes in the city(3), but people in their basements may have them, or they may have solder in their pipes, their copper pipes are soldered with lead and that is soluble, it's soluble in water.
The school system let their water sit for a week before they took an initial test. They were supposed to let it sit for a day, they decided to let it sit for a week (4).  49 of the 51 taps were fine.  Two of them had issues and they were from lead solder that they found close to those water faucets. 

Kudos to the Ludington Area School System who took the initiative to investigate the lead in their individual water systems.  We need more people to do that in the City of Ludington. 

Maybe YOU could educate people on that.  Could you run an article in the paper?  Could you run a class or seminar?  Educating people for their own home's safety, and that's something to think about (5)."

(1):  I presume that the water processed by the WTP is lead-free, I have never argued that.  If they cannot filter out the lead before they send it out, then we surely have problems.   Education-wise, what I brought forth was educational, saying that the city was NOT testing based on EPA/DEQ protocols (i.e. testing homes built after 1986), but nobody in the city wants to declare why they do so.

(3):  As far as we know, there's no lead pipes in the city, she says, granting us no basis as to what her position is based on, or who the "we" are.  I would presume the schools may have believed their own water coolers and taps had no lead in them, before they actually took the effort to test them.  The City's own testing technique is trying to avoid finding lead that may be in the system, by not only selecting city's since 1986, but also using official's houses, and avoiding areas with a likelihood of older plumbing.   

(4):  Testing protocols advise not using water for at least six hours before taking a test sample, but there is no such limit for the maximum time you let it sit.  The LASD school district calendar went up to June 10, 2016, and the testing of these sites happened on the 13th and 16th.  Less than a week after the students left, and not enough time to hyper-inflate the results, even when you would presume that janitors and maintenance personnel would have been using some of the school water taps the week after. 

(5):  Talking about the issue using facts and data is what I have been doing since January, when I started exposing the statewide lead testing results and asking questions of why our kids' blood lead levels were so far above the state average.  The city in reply, has only came out with false claims about their being no lead in the water.  I will continue to broadcast the issue while it still remains a program and educate the folks to the truth about their system.

You may have noticed I skipped point (2), and I did that because it was not only ridiculous, but irresponsible, and needed to be addressed in further detail.  Since the Safe Drinking Water Act took effect in 1986, those who sell plumbing fixtures require them to meet the definition of being lead-free.  Yet the claim was that Lowe's was actually selling lead faucets made in China. 

I chatted with a fellow from Ludington's Lowe's named Dale, a man with a lot of experience and knowledge in the field, and told him that I had brought faucets at Lowe's before and heard from a knowledgeable source that they actually sold faucets with lead in them and was concerned.  Dale alleviated my concern by stressing that they could not have possibly sold me any faucet that wasn't lead-free, because they have none in stock, from China or otherwise. 

He did acknowledge that the definition of lead'-free recently changed (in 2011), making it unlawful to sell brass fixtures that sometimes contained small amounts of lead.  Had there been any plumbing fixtures with brass fittings that exceeded the new restriction left in stock, their register would have alerted them to that fact and they would have been prohibited in selling them.  Another senior fellow in the plumbing department at Home Depot confirmed those facts.   It's good to see that they know what they are talking about

Meanwhile, even before these affirmations, I had contacted by E-mail and alerted Lowe's corporate about the fact that a city councilor had said at a public meeting that their store was selling lead faucets made in China to the public:

I live in Ludington Michigan. I was at a recent city council meeting speaking up about lead that was recently found at two local area schools above the maximum contaminant level (MCL). One of the city councilors, in defense of the city's water utility stated "...you can still buy faucets with lead, made in China, because Lowe's showed me some of those faucets, you can buy those."

Now, section 1417 of the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act prohibits the “use of any pipe, any pipe or plumbing fitting or fixture, any solder, or any flux, after June 1986, in the installation or repair of (i) any public water system; or (ii) any plumbing in a residential or non-residential facility providing water for human consumption, that is not lead free.”

Additionally there is a prohibition on introducing any pipe or plumbing fitting or fixture, any solder, or any flux that is not lead free into commerce; unless the use is for manufacturing or industrial purposes. The statements were recorded and made publicly available, as is the SWDA. I tried to confirm this at the local Lowe's, but couldn't. I did talk with the local Home Depot, and they maintained they only sold lead-free faucets.

I run an internet news site and would like your comment on the accuracy of what this councilor claimed your local Lowe's representative stated. Does your company actually sell faucets that are not lead-free that come from China? Please contact me with your corporate response, otherwise I will have to assume this is actually true and consult with Michigan regulators to have it cease immediately."

On Saturday morning I got the following response:

"The majority of our business relationships are with United States (U.S.) based vendors, some of whom may have manufacturing plants overseas. Lowe's is committed to ensuring that our vendors properly label products pursuant to all federal and state consumer safety requirements.

Our global sourcing policies require vendors to meet or exceed all product safety regulations outlined by individual states in the U.S. and the federal governments in the U.S. and Canada. These policies apply to products manufactured domestically, outside of the U.S., and to products that Lowe's sources globally.

If you have any further questions or concerns please reply to my email or call Lowe’s Customer Care at 1-800-445-6937.

Thank you and I hope you have a great day,

Myrna C.

Lowe's Customer Care"

I would say it is ridiculous and irresponsible for Ludington City Councilor Kathy Winczewski, who is  also a secretary for a local environmental group (AFFEW), to not only claim the city has no lead in their water delivery system without any proof one way or the other, but also claim a reputable retail company like Lowe's would be selling lead faucets unlawfully.  But who gets labelled as ridiculous and irresponsible by a snippy Councilor Krauch at 52:15 into the December 5th meeting:

"But to come in here, week after week, meeting after meeting, in public comment and imply, that there's unsafe lead levels being distributed by the City of Ludington is ridiculous and irresponsible, and you know, we have to be accountable for the things that we say, and inciting panic about something that's not an issue, that's not to say there's not an individual faucet or spigot or individual property that might have an issue, but to imply that there is a systematic problem with the water in the City of Ludington is absolutely, positively ridiculous and irresponsible. Thank you."

What is more reckless, ridiculous, and irresponsible than seeing our kids at the top of the blood lead level list, finding that there are still lead-lined water coolers in our schools-- twenty-five years after they should have been detected and taken out of service according to EPA and DEQ protocols (as discussed in this {under construction} article), and then bashing the concerned citizen who educates the public as to the problems, rather than officials who try to dismiss it as "nothing to see here, move along" and then misinform the public?   

Be alarmed not by me, but by the very words of your officials and the facts that disqualify them.

[XLFD]

To the best of my knowledge, Willy, some may have the same data that I have about the past two lead tests, some probably haven't even seen those.  Both show lead in the water, not very much, but when you take only 'first draw' samples, you will never see much unless you haven't replaced your faucet in 30 years.  Otherwise, the mandated tests are effectively useless in fixing any problems that may exist.