Advocates held a rally Tuesday, Nov. 12, to advocate for the city to call a state of emergency over lead in its drinking water. The state of emergency would help Syracuse more quickly replace lead pipes that carry water. Advocates rallied on the steps of City Hall. Credit: Eddie Velazquez | Central Current

The Syracuse Water Department has altered the testing process for lead in the water of city homes in the past 18 months, a new report by Safe Water Engineering found. 

The report, unveiled by local environmental advocates Wednesday, allege that department policies repeatedly violated federal environmental regulations in attempts to stay within the Environmental Protection Agency threshold of accepted lead contents in city water service lines. 

If the water department had followed guidelines in the EPA’s lead and copper rule (LCR), the city would have exceeded the 15-parts-per-billion threshold in every six-month testing period in the past year and a half, the study allege. Around 14,500 of the city’s water service lines are made out of lead. The material that makes up thousands of others is unknown by the city. 

The report was unveiled by Onondaga County Legislator Maurice Brown, the New York Civil Liberties Union and Families for Lead Freedom Now. 

Mayor’s office spokesman Greg Loh said the city did not see the report until shortly after a Thursday press conference.

“However, our sampling pools have been reviewed with our county and New York State Health Departments to confirm compliance,” Loh said in an email. 

Responding to claims in the report that the city asks residents to test their water by gently opening their tap. The EPA’s regulations indicate that testers should allow a full flow.

“The language is intended to collect samples based on normal household usage and to prevent any spillage of [first draw,’” Loh said. “However, we will ensure instructions are in compliance with the LCR.”

The findings in the report underscore calls from national and local environmental advocates in the past eight months for increased transparency surrounding the city’s water testing methods. Advocates have said Syracuse has a drinking water crisis worse than one seen a decade ago in Flint, Michigan. 

The city has long contested those claims. City officials told residents at a November public hearing on lead that they do not believe the city should call for a state of emergency, a measure long heralded by advocates as key to replacing lead water pipes. At that same meeting, city officials and members of the common council called for community trust. 

About 40% of Syracuse’s water service lines are made of lead, city’s inventory shows

Local public health advocates say the findings are not inspiring confidence in how the city is handling lead in drinking water.

“Right now, we don’t feel comfortable that the testing is being done appropriately,” said Oceanna Fair, a member of Families for Lead Freedom Now, a local organization aimed at combating the city’s lead crisis. “It feels like they’re just testing to be in compliance. Meanwhile, they’re putting our residents at risk.”

Advocates with the National Resources Defense Council have been calling for more transparency in testing since at least November. They used public records requests and assistance from city residents to commission the report from Safe Water, a Michigan-based consulting firm founded by Elin Warn Betanzo, an engineer who helped uncover the crisis in Flint. Betanzo is also a member of the EPA’s National Drinking Water Advisory Council. 

Betanzo’s report highlights several breaches of EPA guidelines and recommendations for testing. She wrote in the report that the ways in which the city skirted around these regulations are typically used by water authorities to underreport the level of lead in the water that arrives at homes.

For instance, LCR regulations call on water utilities to test what is known as “Tier 1 sites,” which refers to properties that have a lead service line. Out of the 265 unique addresses surveyed in the past 18 months by the city, barely more than half of them had confirmed lead pipes — around 52%. 

The report alleges that the lowest number of Tier 1 sites tested by the city came in the first six months of 2024, when only 41% of the properties surveyed had a confirmed lead service line.

Betanzo found that the lead levels in city water pipes surpassed the EPA threshold in each of the past three six-month testing periods if non-Tier 1 sites are excluded from the calculus. The 15 ppb action threshold, which prompts the EPA to direct water utilities to take remedial action, is set to lower to 10 ppb by 2027. 

The city also reported testing results from sites tested outside a particular six-month period, Betanzo wrote.

The number of ppb of lead in the 90th percentile of testing reported by Betanzo, who adjusted for LCR-compliant sites, show, in some cases, stark discrepancies from city reports. Betanzo calculated that a testing period during the last six months of 2023 showed 26.8 ppb at homes with lead service lines. The city’s Drinking Water Quality Report for 2023 does not divide its findings into six-month testing periods, but the overall findings for the year show the level of lead in the water at 15 ppb.

The city hasn’t released a 2024 report, but the public records findings presented by Betanzo show the city reported 11.7 ppb for the second half of the year. The first reporting period in 2024 signified a wake up call for the city given that their testing showed 70 ppb — a number that is almost five times the EPA threshold. 

The report also alleges that the city did not direct residents to test their water in compliance with the EPA’s LCR. The city, Betanzo wrote, instructed residents to gently open their water tap to collect lead and copper rule samples. A slower flow, she adds, can prevent the lead from mobilizing in full force. A full flow of the water provides a more accurate reading and is the EPA’s recommendation, Betanzo wrote.

Betanzo’s report also said the State Department of Health could issue violations to the city for collecting samples from outdoor spigots. Last summer, two water department employees were placed on leave by the city for sampling water from a garden hose. The EPA’s regulations call for samples to come from kitchen sinks and bathrooms. Betanzo said that the records request she reviewed did not identify the addresses where the alleged incidents occurred.

The city also failed to retest properties that were out of compliance. Under the LCR, the water department is required to resample at the same Tier 1 sites to keep track of lead levels over consecutive sampling periods, unless the site no longer meets Tier 1 criteria. Only 58% of the LCR-compliant homes surveyed by the city were retested in the past 18 months, Betanzo wrote.

“Compared with other sampling periods, it appears that Syracuse systematically avoided resampling at sites with high sample results during the [first half of 2024], which is not allowed under the LCR,” Betanzo wrote.

The report, some advocates say, is shocking.

“All of the data points we are using to say as a city that we’re ‘lead safe…’ this report is saying that data is not real,” County Legislator Brown, who represents portions of Syracuse in the Onondaga County Legislature. “This is at best concerning, and at worst corrupt.”

Editor’s note: “Deliberately” was removed from the first sentence of this story. The report does explicitly allege that the city deliberately altered its testing methods. Central Current regrets this error.

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Eddie Velazquez is a Syracuse journalist covering economic justice in the region. He is focused on stories about organized labor, and New York's housing and childhood lead poisoning crises. You can follow...