UPDATE: Water Service Lines
The City of Lapeer and property owners who have been confirmed to have lead water service lines, were notified approximately one year ago. There are 38 lead water service lines and 69 galvanized water service lines in the City of Lapeer.
Those 107 property owners have been notified of the type of water service line they have and have been provided filters and bottled water. The City has already bid the contract to remove those 107 lines and anticipates that they will be removed in the next six months.
The current water sample information being discussed is from multiple samples of the water in 29 of those known lead service lines. At this time, the City of Lapeer has no test results from water service lines outside of the known lead service lines. The water provided to the citizens of the City of Lapeer does not have lead in it.
The City has 3,459 water service lines in total. Of those, 530 have unknown material for the service line between the water shut off in the yard and the water main under the street. All 530 water service lines are copper or plastic from the water shut off in the yard to the water meter in the house. The City, at no cost to the property owner, has been excavating the street side of those service lines to confirm what material the water service line is made of. The City of Lapeer, as well as a contractor, will start excavating these service lines again on Monday September 12th. We anticipate having them all excavated within 40 days.
Out of an abundance of caution the City of Lapeer distributed water filters to the 530 homes that fell into the “unknown” category. This allowed them to filter their water due to the chance that the unknown section of their water service line could be lead of galvanized pipe. The City of Lapeer, in conjunction with the Lapeer County Health Department, also provide bottled water to those 530 homes with the unknow service line material. Additionally, water filters were provided to anyone that wanted one.
On August 13th, the City began running its back up water service wells to provide City of Lapeer citizens with clean safe water after the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) water line failure. The City continued using its well water until August 26th. On August 26th at approximately 8:00 am, the City of Lapeer was provided enough consistent water pressure by GLWA to return citizens to the GLWA water supply. At no time did either water source have lead in the water being supplied.
Due to the use of well water and the occasional fluctuations in water pressure, it is suspected that the existing lead and galvanized water lines leach more lead than when using GLWA water. Due to this concern, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) began to sample and test the water from the known City of Lapeer lead service lines. 29 lead water service lines were sampled and tested a minimum of 4 times each, for a total of 116 samples. In those samples from the 29 homes that were known to have lead water service lines, 38 samples exceeded the maximum allowable lead level of 15 parts per billion.
According to the MDHHS, to date, 116 samples have had lead results ranging from non-detect ppb to 150 ppb. There are 89 lead detections; 38 of these lead detections exceeded 15 ppb (the allowable level). There were 27 samples that were non-detected for lead.
Every Lapeer property with the possibility of having lead in their drinking water supply has been notified of this possibility. Letters and filters were hand delivered to homes. If you are a City of Lapeer resident and you have not received a letter, this water concern does not affect you.