Several strategies are available for reducing lead in drinking water and home interiors, a committee of environmentalists heard Thursday.
The Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission’s environmental committee heard a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official tell how her agency has addressed the lead contamination crises in Flint, Mich., and East Chicago.
And a Michigan City official said a committee there has responded to citizens’ concerns after a news story raised alarms about high lead levels in Michigan City children.
Peg Donnelly, an EPA biologist, related how the alarmingly high levels of lead discovered in Flint’s drinking water early in 2015 resulted from a change in that city’s water supply. When Flint started getting its water from the Flint River instead of Lake Michigan, officials said the more corrosive river water dissolved a protective coating of phosphates in water pipes, and the lead trapped in that coating went into residents’ homes.
Also contributing to Flint’s water crisis was the city’s decades-long economic decline, which left many blocks nearly empty of houses. The resulting lower water flow through distribution pipes in those areas reduced the effectiveness of bacteria-killing chlorine, contributing to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, officials said.
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In East Chicago, the issue has been lead and arsenic in the soil as a result of lead-processing plants that closed years ago. Donnelly said the East Chicago water system has been adding more phosphorus to the water, to provide a protective coating to water pipes.
Also, homeowners there will receive filters for their faucets from the state. Donnelly said those filters have been very effective in reducing lead levels in water.
“We recommend that everyone use a filter at the end of the faucet,” she said.
In Michigan City, the city government formed a committee in March this year to educate the community about the dangers of lead and to help protect families from exposure to it.
Michael Kuss, general manager of the Michigan City Sanitary District, chairs the five-member committee.
Unlike Flint, Michigan City has always gotten its water from Lake Michigan. But when young children have been tested for lead in their blood, those with the highest levels live in the older areas of the city.
Kuss said Michigan City lead committee has been encouraging parents and doctors to test more children for lead, asking schools to test for lead in their drinking water, and distributing materials to tell people how lead can cause lifelong problems.
The committee also has applied for a $1.5 million federal grant, matched with $150,000 of local funds, to reduce the hazards of lead-based paint in older homes – those built before the late 1970s, when lead-based paint was outlawed.
Because children pick up and sometimes eat lead-contaminated paint in windows, Kuss said, the grant would enable the city to replace windows in about 100 homes.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.