HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — Underneath her feet and leaves sits Sunny Matheson’s water pipe. The Henrico County resident has lived in the house near Regency Square Mall for 20 years and has not thought much about her water pipe until recently when she received a letter from Henrico County about it.
The letter now has Matheson and thousands of other county residents suddenly worried about what might lie below.
“I don’t think I can say the word on camera, but it was an expletive,” Matheson said about the word that came out of her mouth when she read the letter.
Henrico officials said they do not know what type of material water pipes on 50,000 properties in the county are made out of. The concern is that some of them could be made of, or contain, lead.
“I think of Flint, Michigan, I don't think of my home. I think most of us don't around here," Matheson said. "It's always, 'It's never in my backyard.' Well, suddenly it's in my yard.”
Lead can affect a baby’s brain development, lower a child’s IQ, and cause kidney and blood pressure problems in adults.
Under a new Lead and Cooper Rule program from the Environmental Protection Agency, all localities across the country had to meet a deadline to produce an initial inventory of all water pipes, and then alert the residents whose service lines are made of “unknown materials.”
“We are trying to determine the pipe that is coming out of the meter and going toward the house. That's what we don't have information on,” Bentley Chan, the Director of Public Utilities for Henrico County, said.
“Is it possible the pipe that's right here is different from the pipe that's in the house?” CBS 6 investigative reporter Melissa Hipolit asked.
“Yes that speaks to not having the information,” Chan responded.
Chan said he understands that the initial letter from the county may have spooked residents, but he said not to worry.
“Our water comes from the James River. The James River is not acidic, and the water that we produce is not acidic,” Chan said. “The county treats its water in such a way, at such a high level, that there is no danger that lead would leech into people's drinking water.”
“How can you be sure, or are you sure, that nobody in Henrico County has corroded lead pipes that are leaching lead into their water?” Hipolit asked.
“We are confident that is not the case mainly due to the 150 sites we test monthly. We get all that information, that information is reported to the VDH, and we monitor everything so closely to make sure there is no danger at all to residents drinking our water,” Chan responded.
Still, the county is urging folks to call 804-501-4466 or email leadfreehenrico@henrico.gov to schedule a time for contractors hired by the county to come out and check your water pipes.
They will scratch, take a picture and do a magnet test to determine what they’re made out of.
Those inspections are costing the county approximately 800 dollars per property.
“Lead, when you scrape it, it's very soft...and it comes out a pretty silverish-grayish color,” one of the contractors said.
The county will also provide any resident who requests a free water test kit.
“If you are saying you are confident there is no lead in the water in Henrico County, why are we spending money to do this?” Hipolit asked Chan.
"So we are spending money to do this, not only because it is a federally mandated program, but we are so interested in the safety of the community there is nothing that we won't do to help residents,” Chan said.
That’s welcome news for Matheson, who said she planned to take action ASAP.
“It is disconcerting. It's on my top to-do list on my desk right now to do more research and contact the county,” Matheson said.
If it does turn out that your water pipes contain lead, the county said it will use federal and state grant funding to replace the pipes at no cost to you.
Each locality is handling the new requirements differently.
Richmond
In the City of Richmond, DPU spokeswoman Rhonda Johnson said there are approximately 66,700 water pipes made of unknown material.
She said, so far, the city has "close to 300 service lines currently identified as lead on the customer side.”
"Even though the use of lead solder was banned in the U.S. in 1986, it might still be present in older homes. The corrosion of these lead-based materials can add lead to tap water, particularly if water sits for an extended time in pipes, for instance, in the morning, after sitting overnight, when you return from work or from a trip away,” Johnson said.
The city is asking residents to test their pipes themselves and report the information to the city. But for those "property owners requiring assistance, we currently have a pilot program that enlists the aid of plumbers to complete the identification for the property owner at no cost to them.”
If your water pipe is determined to be made out of lead, the city does have some financial assistance available to help property owners replace their pipe. So far the city has given $1.5 million to property owners to help them replace their service lines.
However, Richmond’s current funding allocation for helping property owners replace lead pipes has reached capacity.
The next funding cycle is set to open in the Spring of 2025.
"In addition, Richmond will begin a program to complete replacements (public and private) in a targeted, block-by-block approach linking the Lead Service Line (LSL) Replacement projects along with other utility work so that all neighborhood disruptions can be minimized and replacements can be completed as cost efficiently as possible in areas with the most need. The City of Richmond has and will continue to request grant funding from both state and federal agencies to fund the replacement of private lead service lines,” Johnson said.
More information on the city’s Lead Free Water Program can be found here or by calling 804-646-8600.
Chesterfield
In Chesterfield, the county has declared its entire water system, including water pipes on people’s private property, to be “lead free.”
"The county’s water service line inventory has been a three-year plus effort and will be ongoing. Our work to date has included a records review, field investigations of service line pipe material, research into other data sources that could provide evidence into pipe material, such as home year build dates, and statistical analysis. To date, we have reviewed over 200,000 records and conducted over 12,000 field investigations. Teresa Bonifas, a spokeswoman for the county said.
Bonifas said the county got permission from the Virginia Department of Health to utilize a statistical analysis methodology which allowed the county to verify with a 95 percent confidence level that private water pipes that were classified as being made of “unknown” material were not made of lead.
"The number of service lines that were classified as “unknown” prior to our statistical analysis was 34,870 water service lines, or 27 percent. Following the statistical analysis, 33,498 service lines were classified as “non-lead.” To date, no lead or galvanized lines were discovered during 1,372 verifications of water service lines over the course of our inventory work,” Bonifas said.
We asked Bently Chan with Henrico why they did not opt for the statistical analysis method that Chesterfield used.
"After researching this methodology, it became apparent that we did not have the depth of supporting information to meet the threshold for a high confidence level for the outputs," Chan said. "We chose, instead, to physically inspect the unknowns to ensure that the information we obtained was accurate and complete for the benefit of our residents."
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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