Central Current reported this story with funding from the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York.
Public health advocates called on Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh to declare a state of emergency over the amount of lead in the city’s drinking water at a Tuesday rally.
The rally, set up by the New York Civil Liberties Union, echoed calls from the NYCLU and other local organizations from earlier in the month to put in place a state of emergency. Advocates rallied outside city hall.
Declaring a state of emergency would open the city up to get more funding to replace the more than 14,500 lead pipes throughout the city. Those lead pipes are at risk of leaching water contaminated with lead into the drinking water at thousands of city homes.
“One of the main things I keep hearing is that I need to be patient,” said Darlene Medley. Medley’s children were poisoned by lead in their home due to chipping lead paint. “You want me to be patient. I can’t be patient. No more. I can’t when these are my children.”
Medley is part of Families For Lead Freedom Now, a group fighting Syracuse’s lead crisis.
Tuesday’s rally followed advocates dubbing the levels of lead in Syracuse’s water to be higher than those seen in Flint, Michigan during its own crisis 10 years ago. The advocates based the claim on city test results from the summer. Since then, advocates have raised questions about the city’s water testing methods, which has led to the suspension of employees at the water department for poor testing practices.
The city has refuted the claims of a drinking water crisis. Officials maintain that the numbers from the yearly water quality reports in the past few years do not support the claims of advocates who say Syracuse’s crisis is worse than Flint. An analysis of reports dating back to 2019 suggests the city’s water has tested at or below the current threshold of action of 15 parts-per-billion set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
The lead leached into the city’s drinking water could compound its lead paint crisis, advocates have said. About 10% of children who are tested for lead poisoning in the city are found to have elevated levels of lead in their blood, according to county health department data.
City spokesman Greg Loh has labeled the high levels of lead highlighted by local and national advocates, which reached about 70 ppb, as outliers.
The city attributed the high levels found in that probe to non-regulation testing practices conducted by two employees of the water department.
The city announced at the end of October that the workers have been placed on a form of administrative leave, according to a NewsChannel 9 report. The TV station reported that instead of leaving empty containers for homeowners to take their own sample from indoor sinks, as per EPA regulations, the two employees were allegedly filling containers with water from outdoor faucets on their own.
Preliminary test results the city will have to submit to the state by Dec. 31 so far show that lead in the water at 115 homes tested is at or below 10 ppb, Loh said.
To address public concerns, the city is set to host a public information meeting Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the Common Council chambers.
How a state of emergency could help
Declaring a state of emergency would open up funding streams from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that lead to a faster replacement of lead service lines, advocates said Tuesday.
A new EPA rule on water contamination could soon require cities like Syracuse to replace all of its lead service lines in a decade. The city plans to replace more than 3,000 lines next year using about $22.8 million in state funds. The plan is to continue at that pace on a yearly basis.
Advocates believe it can be done much quicker. Erik Olson, an environmental attorney working with the National Resources Defense Council, said the city should be able to replace the lines in a year and a half.
Olson was a plaintiff in lawsuits against the cities of Newark, New Jersey, and Flint, securing millions in funds for residents affected by the cities’ respective lead contamination crises.
Olson noted that Newark, a significantly more populous city than Syracuse and with a larger inventory of lead service lines, replaced their pipes in about 2.5 years.
“Syracuse could remove 14,000 lead pipes in a year and a half if it actually wanted to do it,” Olson said. “Those lead pipes are ticking time bombs. Anytime that there is a release of lead, it can get into people’s tap water and threaten children.”
Advocates also called for the city to distribute water filters to households with a lead service line.
The city and Onondaga County have ordered water filters to cover families with children aged 6 years old and younger. Loh said they should be arriving in the next several weeks and that the city will partner with the Syracuse City School District to distribute them. Additionally, Loh said, the county will work to deliver filters to families with pregnant women enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.
Advocates also would like the city to start a public outreach campaign to further prevent lead poisoning for Syracuse families. They noted that a lack of information has led to perpetuating, generational lead poisoning.
Medley also pointed to the case of Oceanna Fair’s family as an example of generational neglect of the lead poisoning crisis. Fair’s brother was poisoned by lead 40 years ago due to lead paint. Her grandchild is now showing elevated blood-lead levels years after Fair’s house was cleared by county inspectors for possible lead paint and dust contamination.
Fair, who is a member of Families for Lead Freedom Now, believes her grandchild was poisoned because of a lead service line in her house. At first, she didn’t know how her grandchild had come into contact with lead.
“We couldn’t figure it out until this summer when the news broke about the water lines in Syracuse,” she said. “We ran down to that basement and we saw that lead service line coming into our home. We had been feeding this baby lead by the cupful.”
‘I don’t think there is a systemic failure’
Advocates worry the city is trying to use water department workers as scapegoats to justify a high level of lead in the water.
“Even if you had two actors behaving that way, that is just not enough to give us security or any kind of reassurance that the water is safe,” said Lanessa Owens-Chaplin, the director of the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Center told Central Current.
In response to allegations of scapegoating and dishonest reporting, Loh said years of testing prior to the summer’s test results, show the incident is an outlier.
“I don’t think there is a systemic failure,” Loh told Central Current. “I think really what you have to look at is the history of testing in Syracuse that showed that levels were under EPA requirements, and the fact that ,when sampling was repeated again following the proper protocols, the results again came in under the EPA guidance.”
Loh said the city is working to fulfill a public records request from the National Resources Defense Council seeking to learn how the city tests its water in homes with lead services lines.
For advocates, a lack of trust in the city’s testing and the large number of lead service lines in the city further justify the need for their demands to be fulfilled.
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