The Syracuse, NY Water Department placed two employees on administrative leave on Oct. 31 for allegedly improperly testing tap water for lead earlier this year. City officials say they may have collected some samples with tap water outside homes, which officials said likely caused the large increase in lead levels seen in July.
The city’s action is the latest development in an ongoing dispute between community residents and the city after lead levels in some homes were found to be more than double those found in Flint , Michigan, during the drinking water crisis. Local residents and medical providers, backed by national environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, are calling on city officials to declare a state of emergency that would give the city access to federal funds to help fix the problem.
The city says that claim is unwarranted because it has already secured $22.8 million in state funding to replace more than 3,000 lead service lines over the next year. Its water department has increased the number and rate of lead service line replacements in recent years and will continue to do so until all lead pipes are replaced, says Greg Loh, the city’s director of policy. He says affected residents were notified and a public press conference announced the findings.
City officials announced in August that routine monitoring in July had found elevated levels of lead in some homes. A New York Freedom of Information Act query by the groups and others showed that one home in 2024 had 2,520 parts per billion of lead, and another in 2023 had a reading of 775 ppb.
More than 14,000 homes in Syracuse are believed to have lead pipes.
But the City Council says that these results are atypical. “Sampling results for the second half of 2024 at 115 properties were below EPA action levels.” Loh said: He added that after re-sampling 24 of the 27 properties where elevated levels were found, only two were above US Environmental Protection Agency action levels. “Results from the next round of EPA-required testing are expected soon and will guide future actions,” he added, noting that the city is taking steps to follow EPA requirements, in coordination with the ‘state and the Onondaga County Health Department.
Erik Olson, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s senior director of health and environmental health strategy, says the nonprofit has filed another state Freedom of Information Act request to better understand how the city is conducting its monitoring. “We’re a little skeptical about how the number could drop from 70 ppb, a sevenfold decrease, in a matter of months,” he said. “Syracuse has now announced that it plans to provide point-of-use filters to help remove lead for some city residents, although we have not seen evidence that this is being done widely. We are now in discussions with partners of Syracuse and the state to determine next steps.”
Virginia Tech engineering professor Marc Edwards, who drew attention to Flint’s drinking water crisis in 2015, says if the hoses were sampled, the tests could have shown how resulting in an artificially higher number because outdoor tap water often contains lead. . “It could definitely set off a false alarm,” he told ENR.
In 2023, the Biden administration unnecessarily declared a state of emergency in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands due to lead levels more than 100 times the EPA action level. The test results later turned out to be inaccurate, Edwards says.
