Drop by drop

There’s something in the water

Nearly 30 million Americans get their drinking water from systems that violated the EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule from Jan. 2015 to March 2018, according to an analysis of EPA data. The Sept. 2018 report from the National Resource Defense Council noted the vast majority of these were monitoring and reporting violations, meaning officials failed to adequately monitor their water and report problems to the government and consumers. Of that 30 million, 5.5 million received water from systems that exceeded the EPA’s Lead Action Level, past which additional steps are mandated to lower lead levels.

This crisis of infrastructure has struck Tulsa County. Four Tulsa County water systems serving nearly 60,000 people violated the Lead and Copper Rule between Jan. 2015 and Oct. 2018. Jenks Public Works Authority, Bixby Public Works Authority, Shadow Valley Mobile Home Park in Bixby and Sleepy Valley Mobile Home Park in Owasso all committed Lead and Copper Rule monitoring and reporting violations between these years. The Shadow Valley and Sleepy Valley water systems have since been deactivated. 

Water sanitation and management is a complicated process. In Tulsa, for example, water is drawn from local lakes: Lake Spavinaw, Lake Eucha and Lake Oolagah. The water is then processed either at the Mohawk or A.B. Jewell water treatment plants. Next, it’s treated through a sequence of processes. Large debris is filtered out first, followed by a process known as flocculation where aluminum chlorohydrate and a cationic polymer are used to coagulate impurities into larger chunks, which are then removed. 

The water is then fed through a filtration system composed of sand and granulated activated carbon to remove bad tastes and smells. Fluoride is added to protect against tooth decay, as well as a small amount of chlorine to kill any bacteria that may have wiggled through the treatment process. 

After these additions, the water is deposited in subterranean storage tanks called clearwells, where sodium hydroxide is added to manage corrosion of pipes. Ammonia is added as it leaves the treatment plant in a process called chloramination where ammonia binds to the chlorine in the water, preventing dangerous byproducts from forming while in the distribution system.

Corrosion management is a major issue for many municipalities. Many cities were built with lead water pipes. If a city’s water is not monitored very carefully, these pipes can corrode and taint drinking water. The effects of this are severe and far-reaching. In adults, exposure to lead can result in high blood pressure, memory problems, headaches, reduced sperm count, miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births. Children exposed to lead poisoning can suffer from developmental delays, difficulty learning, hearing loss and seizures.

Fortunately, the City of Tulsa does not have any lead water mains, meaning pipes carrying water from treatment plants to neighborhoods are not in danger of leaching lead into drinking water. City service lines, smaller pipes that carry water from the main to a home’s water meter, and private service lines, which carry water from the meter to your tap, may still contain lead. Repair crews have been replacing lead city service lines since the 1980s, but the City acknowledges “it is difficult to determine the remaining number of lead service lines in our water system.” Further, private service lines are the responsibility of the property owner.

Lead and copper are hardly the only things to be concerned about in our drinking water. Last year, the City of Tulsa conducted tests on more than 32,000 water samples, monitoring the presence of nearly 30 possible contaminants from a variety of sources. 

While Tulsa has been lucky enough to avoid serious contamination, not all of Tulsa County has been so fortunate. In 2013, Broken Arrow Municipal Authority exceeded safety standards for Coliform bacteria, which is present in human and animal feces. Jenks Public Works Authority has had five Coliform violations since 2012, with the most recent being in 2015. Since 2014, Collinsville has exceeded acceptable Haloacetic Acids levels, byproducts of water sanitation processes, 11 times. The list goes on.

Also of concern is the Trump administration’s repeal of the Waters of the United States rule, a mandate passed by the Obama administration expanding the legal definition of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. Repealing the rule means farms and agribusinesses near smaller bodies of water will have fewer restrictions concerning farming techniques and crops, and will no longer require EPA permits for the use of potentially harmful pesticides and fertilizers. These chemicals do not simply go away. Rather, they enter the water supply and make clean drinking water that much harder to attain, costing local municipalities more money.

Lastly, one of the documented effects of climate change on our region is greater aridity and more drought. According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, when drought affects a region “the remaining water can have higher concentrations of chemicals and solid particles, lower dissolved oxygen levels, and a higher density of germs that cause infectious diseases.”

Keeping our water clean is already difficult enough. Aging infrastructure, deregulation and climate change will only make safe drinking water harder to come by in the coming years.