Utility: Federal Way drinking water safe, lead levels low

Published 11:06 am Friday, April 29, 2016

With Seattle’s water recently having a lead scare and Tacoma having one underway now – both on the heels of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan – residents in Federal Way could reasonably be concerned about lead levels in their own drinking water.

According to the city’s water provider, those worries can be eased for now.

The Lakehaven Utility District, which owns and operates most of the water mains and associated components in Federal Way, said the root causes of both Flint’s and Tacoma’s lead problems aren’t present in Federal Way.

“From all the sampling we have done, the water is safe to drink,” said John Bowman, Lakehaven’s general manager.

Tacoma and Federal Way share a water source, Bowman said, but the water source wasn’t behind Tacoma’s lead issues. Rather, lead components within the network of pipes that move water around the city and into homes were to blame.

All water is corrosive, which means that, given enough time, it can eat away at whatever is around it. In Flint and Tacoma, some pieces of the local water systems were made with lead, and the water over time caused those pieces to degrade. As they degraded, small amounts of the heavy metal began contaminating the water, leading to elevated levels flowing from city taps.

The specific lead pieces that touched off Tacoma’s issues are called “gooseneck fittings,” which are flexible tubes of pipe that attach water mains to a building’s service line. In Federal Way, lead gooseneck fittings weren’t used in the city’s water network.

“We have not found a lead gooseneck in our system,” Bowman said. “We have no historical documents showing lead goosenecks or lead-jointed pipes, and those [records] go back to World War II.”

The federal Environmental Protection Agency issues the guidelines and procedures for testing lead in water supplies. At the city level, focus is concentrated most intently on the water in buildings that register in the 90th percentile of lead levels – in other words, the buildings with water levels higher than in 90 percent of other buildings. While no amount of lead in water is safe, the EPA sets the limit for levels requiring action at 15 parts per billion – that is, 15 units of lead for every 1 billion units of water.

In accordance with EPA guidelines, Lakehaven checks Federal Way’s water every one to three years. This year is a test year; the last test year, 2013, found that houses in the 90th percentile of concern had water with lead levels of 10 parts per billion, below the action level.

According to Stan French, Lakehaven’s water operations manager, if lead levels were to hit 15 parts per billion then Lakehaven’s required “actions” would be alerting the affected property owner, finding the cause of the contamination, doing something to reduce the contamination, then checking again in six months.

Ten parts per billion is something Bowman said Lakehaven is watching, but the ratio is safely under the 15 parts per billion needed to trigger an action and well under the ratios found in Tacoma and Flint. Water tested from four Tacoma homes had lead levels between 100 and 400 parts per billion. In Flint, the 90th percentile of homes tested started at 27 parts per billion and ended at 13,000 parts per billion.

If residents are still concerned, Bowman said, a typical water filter eliminates most lead from drinking water. Aside from that, lead in contaminated water can concentrate in pipes if water hasn’t flowed through them in a few hours, which usually occurs overnight. If a resident hasn’t used any water in six to eight hours, “flushing” the pipes by letting water run for about two minutes will result in non-stagnant water coming from the tap.

Lakehaven has more information about Federal Way’s water system on its website at www.lakehaven.org.