There’s nothing quite like the feeling of opening an innocuous looking piece of mail that suddenly makes you wonder if you’ve been ingesting poison from your faucet for an untold amount of time.

It’s an experience that plenty of Townies might have felt after around 8,000 letters were sent out last week informing them that they had a water service line made out of unknown materials — and that this unknown material could be the most negatively notorious naturally occurring element known to the collective public consciousness — lead.

The reason for the letters going out is above and beyond the control of local officials. It’s set by federal legislation (The Lead and Copper Rule), which was first authored by the EPA in 1991, and carried out locally by the state Department of Health.

That law was amended in 2021, which went into effect in Rhode Island last year. As a result, municipalities were all required to do a full inventory of their service lines to catalogue what material each water-carrying pipe was made out of.

That gets a bit complicated, according to Jim Marvel, Water Superintendent for the City of East Providence. Not only because the city has around 15,200 water service lines branching off from its underground water mains throughout the city, but because those lines are separated into two categories: the portion overseen and owned by the city, and the portion that goes from the curb into the home, which is the property of the homeowners.

The inventory of the service lines was completed this past October. While they did confirm that 29 lines were made of lead on the owner side, they also found that a great majority of the city lines were not comprised of lead. However, they found they had no records on file for over half (around 8,000) of the lines going into individual homes and business addresses.

“That’s mostly due to us not keeping track of the owner’s side 40 or 50 years ago,” he said.

And although he believes that very few of those 8,000 notified have any reason to worry about their lines possibly being lead, the law required notification to all of them anyways.

“If a service material is unknown in our records, we have to notify the property owner that their service type is unknown and could possibly be lead,” Marvel said. “That’s regulatory language, and not how I would have said it. But all the language in the letters we sent out was Health Department language.”

Residents encouraged to check the lines themselves
Marvel insisted during an interview on Monday that there was no reason for widespread panic in East Providence regarding lead in their water, for multiple reasons.

First and foremost, lead is an increasingly uncommon material to find within residential water infrastructure. This is due to increased awareness of its toxicity and negative health impacts throughout the decades, particularly following the humanitarian disaster that occurred in Flint, Michigan.

But Marvel said that East Providence’s prudence regarding removing lead from the service lines long preceded that.

“The city had a very comprehensive lead service removal program for quite a while back in the 70s, 80s and 90s,” he said. “It coincided with the road improvement program, and we took most of the lead on the city side out.”

Marvel said that only around 2,000 of the more than 15,000 water service lines that fall within the city’s purview came up as unknown. They will go through the process of confirming those are safe, but he doesn’t anticipate many surprises.

For the 8,000 residents who were notified, Marvel reiterated information from the letter sent out that individual homeowners should feel empowered to check their water service line themselves, as determining whether or not it is made of lead is a fairly straightforward process.

The first step is to locate the water line, which is usually found in the basement or within a crawl space. You can find the water line easily by looking for a water meter, and a pipe coming into it from outside the house in the direction of the street, where it attaches underground to the water main.

At the juncture where the pipe goes into the water meter, you can test the pipe with a magnet. If it sticks, it’s not lead. If it is orange or shiny like a penny, it is copper. If it is not magnetic, you can scratch the pipe with a coin, and if it scrapes easily and leaves behind a shiny streak of silver metal underneath, you might have a lead service line. Residents should also keep in mind that lead lines in homes built after 1940 is rare.

Marvel also provided reassurance that East Providence has never had a bad history with lead.

“We have never had a lead violation in East Providence, and I don’t foresee it happening in the future either,” he said. “The water is treated to be non-corrosive, and we’ve had no issues at all.”

“I think people get a little nervous and quite frankly I don’t blame them,” he continued. “But out of those 8,000, less than 100 need to be concerned.”

What can you do if you are concerned?
If you have doubts or want someone to check it out for you to be sure, you can contact the East Providence Water Department at 401-435-7741 or waterdept@eastprovidenceri.gov to have someone come inspect your lines.

You should be aware, however, that the vast amount of letters sent out has led to an influx of people doing just that.

“The biggest burden for us right now is doing appointments,” Marvel said. “We are getting inundated with appointments right now…We’re booked out for 2 or 3 weeks solid.”

If you find out that you’re one of the unlucky few who does actually have a lead service line, the city will replace it at no cost to you. They can also provide you with a filtration pitcher and a 6-month supply of filters while the replacement takes place.

There are additional steps you can take to ensure that water from a lead service line is safe to use, such as letting the water run for five minutes after it has not been run for 6 hours or longer. Do not use hot water from the faucet for consumption, rather use filtered water that utilizes a filter specifically graded to deal with lead.