Newark residents will have to rely on bottled water to cook and drink for at least another three weeks while state and city officials sample 225 homes to understand why filters meant to reduce lead levels in the water did not work as expected.
“The larger your sample base is, the more certainty you can have that results are representative as a whole,” New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Catherine McCabe told NJ Advance Media on Friday. “At the same time, we are trying to move as quickly as possible.”
Newark has been handing out more than 70,000 cases of bottled water for the last two weeks after alarming results from two of three tested homes raised questions about the 39,000 filters the city distributed as a short-term fix to its lead water crisis.
State and city officials have previously not detailed specifics about the testing plan.
“We have not drawn at this point that this is some widespread problem because you cannot do that based on samples of three homes,” McCabe said. She urged residents not to throw away the PUR filters they’ve gotten from the city because even the initial sampling results showed the products were removing some lead, just not enough to keep levels below what’s federally allowed.
“That has to stop,” she said, adding that there’s “no evidence that the filters are failing." McCabe said the filters “are doing what they are supposed to do, they are removing the build up of the lead.
Lead isn’t coming from from the source water but rather flaking off garden hose-sized pipes called lead service lines that connect underground water mains to homes.
Only Newark residents who are served by the Pequannock water treatment plant are affected. The plant pumps water to residents in the South and West wards and parts of the Central and North wards. Water treatment at the Pequannock water plant, known as corrosion control, is supposed to keep lead from dissolving into the water but that failed sometime before lead levels first spiked in the city in 2017.
McCabe said it was premature to share sampling results until the state had a complete database, adding that the testing pool could be expanded past 225 homes. Testing from the two homes that initially triggered public alarm showed one home contained 1,600 parts per billion of lead in unfiltered water and 57.9 parts per billion post-filtration. The other home had 112 parts per billion of lead pre-filter and 50 parts per billion post-filtration. The PUR filters are nationally certified to remove up to 150 parts per billion -- 10 times the federal action level for lead.
Homes with lead service lines, lead solder or other indoor lead plumbing are being targeted in the sampling plan, state officials said.
“We don’t want to be surprised by where we are not looking,” McCabe said.
Four teams of three people representing the state, city and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been testing homes across the city since last Friday under a strict sampling protocol. Six samples will be taken from homes: three unfiltered and three from filtered water. The first draw will test the water left overnight in the plumbing, the second will test water in the service line and the third will test water in the underground main. Both types of filters given out by the city -- pitcher filters and faucet filters -- will be tested.
“We are attempting to analyze two things at the same time,” McCabe said. “Whether the filter is performing and whether these levels are decreasing when you flush the system.”
Filters can stop working if hot water is used or if they are not periodically changed. McCabe said testers will control for human error by replacing filters in those cases. (New filters were also used in the initial sampling that prompted the the EPA to request bottled water be distributed to residents earlier this month.)
City officials did additional sampling while distributing bottled water the first week but it’s not clear how much of those results will be used in the database.
Read more of NJ.com’s coverage of New Jersey water issues here.
Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.
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