“You may have seen the City’s Department of Public Services staff knocking on doors in your neighborhood recently,” City Manager Jeff Mansfield said today.

 

The DPS staff members are looking for additional single family residences with lead water service leads entering the home.  Such locations are known in the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s jargon as “Tier 1” sampling sites for the city’s routine lead and copper testing program, he said.

 

“The MDEQ requires that the city test 20 such Tier 1 sites for lead and copper every 3 years.  We will be sampling and testing again for lead and copper in our water supply over the next few weeks.".

The DPS crews look for Tier 1 sampling sites primarily in the older portions of the city where water services were installed to homes built prior to roughly 1930 (although later in some cases), he said.

 

“However, even in the case of many of these older homes, the water services are made of galvanized steel or have been replaced with copper piping. 

“And, since the city has been feeding protective phosphate for many, many years, even where lead services do exist the lead does not find its way into the water supply in the home since the phosphate coats the interior wall of the pipe keeping the lead from entering the water,” he continued. 

 

“The MDEQ’s rules related to lead and copper in community water distribution systems are still evolving at this time.  Once the MDEQ establishes final guidelines for inventorying and addressing lead components in water systems, the city will begin a program to replace lead service leads in the city.

“In the meantime, we will continue routine testing of the city’s drinking water to ensure that all contaminant levels remain well within the MDEQ standards,” Mansfield said.