By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 5, 2008

The board of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority voted yesterday to curtail a multimillion-dollar program to replace all of the water system's lead service pipes, saying that the project was expensive and that other measures had reduced lead in the city's water.

The board passed a resolution to suspend the large-scale replacement program but said it would continue replacing public lead pipes when water mains are being fixed or, in certain cases, when residents want to replace the private section of lead pipe going into their homes.

David McLaughlin, the utility's acting director of engineering and technical services, said the move would save WASA about $197 million over the next seven years.

"I think it's a solid move," said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who heads the committee that oversees WASA. "I have pressed for it for months and months and months. We had expert testimony that the . . . program was not achieving the desired objective and may have actually been having adverse effects."

He added, "It was just money down the drain."

In other action yesterday, the WASA board approved a rate increase of 7.5 percent, down from the 8.5 percent requested by its management. The increase takes effect Oct 1. It is the authority's sixth increase since 2003, when rates were reduced by 5.25 percent. WASA is at the start of a 10-year $3.1 billion infrastructure-improvement program.

After hazardous levels of lead were found in city water in 2004, the authority launched an aggressive plan to reduce lead contamination by replacing the District's known 35,000 public lead service pipes.

As of June, the program had cost $109 million, according to WASA documents, and it was forecast to cost an additional $293 million.

WASA decided in 2004 to replace the public portion of the lead service lines and require homeowners to pay for replacing that portion of pipe on their private property if they chose to have the work done.

Only a few thousand homeowners have chosen to pay the $2,000 apiece to replace the lead pipes on their property. As a result, in most cases, WASA's efforts produced only a partial replacement of the lead pipe. And in those cases, studies showed, work on the pipes resulted in a temporary increase in lead in the water for some residents, a problem that WASA said lasted about two weeks but that critics said lasted longer.

WASA officials have said the addition of orthophosphate, which inhibits corrosion, to the water in 2004 has dramatically reduced lead levels and made the District's water safe to drink.

Local safe water activists agree that the orthophosphate has helped, but they contend that WASA's water testing procedures are flawed and that the results are probably inaccurate.

"We agree that orthophosphate has helped," said Yanna Lambrinidou, a resident of the city's Chevy Chase neighborhood and a member of Parents for Nontoxic Alternatives. "We would not contest that. We agree that lead in the water probably today is less serious than it was 2004. But we don't have data that orthophosphate has solved the problem completely."

At the same time, Lambrinidou voiced opposition to even reduced numbers of partial replacements, which the authority's resolution allows. She said it was "inexcusable" that WASA intended to do them.

Paul Schwartz, national policy coordinator of Clean Water Action, said: "This is a travesty. They ought to do full pipe replacement or nothing at all. That's the most protective of public health."

McLaughlin said that when WASA began a scheduled review of the pipe replacement program late last year, lead levels were well below hazardous and had been for three years. He said authority officials realized that partial replacement did not result in a significant drop in lead levels, "inasmuch as you still have a piece of the lead pipe on the property."

"It drops maybe one or two parts per billion," he said. "How significant is that? So it's not particularly effective in dropping lead levels at the customer's tap."

Public and neighborhood meetings were held to discuss the issue this year, and experts were called in, the authority said.

"Since orthophosphate is effective, has been shown to be effective, since the majority of our customers . . . still have a portion of lead line on their property . . . the board's reevaluating the program as a whole," McLaughlin said.

Graham said the city's Department of the Environment is preparing to conduct a broad independent study of the overall quality of the city's water to satisfy the concerns of all parties.