Last month, the Rhode Island Department of Health launched an interactive dashboard that shows the prevalence of lead material in drinking water service lines, according to a Feb. 17 press release.
RIDOH began developing the dashboard after amendments to the Rhode Island Lead Poisoning Prevention Act required water suppliers to post an inventory of their service lines and the materials they’re composed of, said Ryan Hoskins, an environmental scientist with the RIDOH Center for Drinking Water Quality.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lead typically enters drinking water reserves when lead pipes carrying that water experience corrosion.
But “just having a lead service line does not mean that there is lead in your drinking water,” Director of Health Jerry Larkin said in the RIDOH press release. “Public water systems take many steps to keep drinking water safe from lead, including treatment that reduces corrosion and routine testing, with a focus on homes with lead service lines.”
Hoskins said that “any lead is bad,” but emphasized that there are regulations in place to “minimize the amount of lead” present in drinking water and that public water systems are legally required to monitor lead levels in water. He also recommended installing water filters.
In 1986, Congress banned new construction of lead pipes. Under the LPPA, all existing lead service lines in the state must be replaced by 2033.
Rhode Island’s lead pipe frequency is relatively “on par” with the rest of New England, according to Hoskins.
The prevalence of lead pipes in Providence can be attributed to the city’s relatively old infrastructure, said Joseph Goodwill, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Rhode Island.
Cities like Providence that experienced exponential growth and industrialization before the toxicity of lead became well-known tended to install lead pipes when constructing buildings at that time, Goodwill said.
Putting aside its toxicity, Goodwill said that lead is ductile and bendable, making it a hypothetically “perfect material” for a pipe.
On Brown’s campus, water in several buildings — including the Sciences Library, the Urban Environmental Lab and the Orwig Music Library — is at least partially supplied by lead pipes, according to the dashboard.
The dashboard also shows that buildings on campus have relatively fewer lead pipes than those in the surrounding areas off-campus.
Brown has replaced the majority of lead service lines on campus, according to Michael Guglielmo, vice president for facilities and campus operations.
“The lead levels in the drinking water in all of our auxiliary housing properties and residence halls — all of the buildings on campus in which community members reside — are below the (Environmental Protection Agency)’s action level,” Guglielmo wrote in an email to The Herald.
Lead action levels are standards set by the federal government to measure “the effectiveness of the corrosion control treatment in water systems,” according to the EPA. The agency’s Lead and Copper Rule sets an action level of 0.015 milligrams per liter. Water systems must take certain actions — like public lead education or line replacement — if 10% or more of water samples exhibit a concentration exceeding the action level.
At on-campus locations where lead concentrations exceed these limits, Brown has provided bottled water service and posted signage near sinks discouraging individuals from drinking tap water, Guglielmo said. The University’s Environmental Health and Safety team also “proactively tested lead levels … in 2007-2008 and again in 2018-2020,” he added.
DeeAnn Guo, a community organizer with nonprofit Childhood Lead Action Project, described the dashboard as “encouraging” and “a step towards more transparency for people across the state.”
Replacing all lead service lines is “very, very important,” said Guo, who also helps coordinate the Lead Free Water RI coalition. “There is no safe exposure to lead, especially for children,” she added.
Initiatives to replace lead pipes in the state are not new, Goodwill said. Providence Water, for example, “has been doing outreach and replacements for years.” But it wasn’t until LPPA was amended in 2023 that property owners could be reimbursed for any costs incurred from replacing private lead lines.
Incentivizing homeowners to replace their pipes may also be difficult, Goodwill said. Pipes on private properties are split between public and private ownership, so public utilities “can’t replace the whole pipe without contracting and getting consent from the property owner,” he added.
Pipe replacements may be especially difficult for tenants, who often need to get consent from their landlord before any work can begin. Guo has been working with her colleagues at the Childhood Lead Action Project on a bill that would “allow tenants to sign up or sign off on their lead service line replacement if their landlord is unresponsive,” she said.
“Full replacements should be happening now, even across the country,” Guo added.
Megan is a metro editor covering health and environment. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she spends her free time drinking coffee and wishing she was Meg Ryan in a Nora Ephron movie.
