Lead and Copper Rule

According to EPA s National Compliance Report for calendar year 1996 (EPA 1998g), the vast majority of people in the nation received water from systems that had no reported violations of the maximum contaminant level and treatment technique requirements or significant monitoring and reporting requirements. Lead has a maximum permissible level of 15 pg/L delivered to any user of a public water system. Lead and copper are regulated in a treatment technique that requires systems to take tap water samples at sites with lead pipes or copper pipes that have lead solder and/or are served by lead service lines. The water system is required to take treatment steps if the action level (15 pg/L for lead) is exceeded in more than 10% of tap water samples. For calendar year 1996, nearly 6 million people in the United States were served by community water systems that reported maximum contaminant level and treatment technique violations of the Lead and Copper Rule (EPA 1998g). 

F00009 Lead and Copper Rule Minor Revisions Fact Sheet for Public Water Systems That Serve More Than 50,000 Persons 816F00010 Lead and Copper Rule Minor Revisions Fact Sheet for Large System Owners and Operators [Draft]... 

R96001 Microscopic Particulate Analysis (MPA) for Filtration Plant Optimization 812B92007 Monitoring Requirements for Lead and Copper Rules Water Systems Serving 10,001 to 50,000 Persons... 

R01021 State Implementation Guidance for the Lead and Copper Rule Minor... 

U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). 2005. Lead and copper rule A quick reference guide for schools and child care facilities that are regulated under the safe drinking water act. Available at http // www.epa.gov/safewater/schools/pdfs/lead/qrg lcr schools.pdf. 

Implementation of the 1986 Amendments to SDWA led to the development of a number of important rules, including the Total Coliform Rule, the Surface Water Treatment Rule, the Lead and Copper Rule, and regulations for a large number of chemicals of public health concern. All public water systems using surface water sources were required to disinfect and provide specific levels of treatment for microbial pathogens most systems were required to filter their water. In addition, the best available technology was specified for the treatment of contaminants for which an MCL was established. 

The Lead and Copper Rule Sets Limits on How Much Lead Can Be in Drinking Water... 

In 1991 the federal government responded to the new information about the dangers of lead exposure with a program for monitoring and reducing lead in drinking water. The Lead and Copper Rule reduced the ACTION LEVEL for lead in drinking water from 50 to 15 ppb. 

In systems where action levels are exceeded, the Lead and Copper Rule has requirements for educating the public in addition to more monitoring and corrosion control. Notices are to be included in water bills, and more extensive written materials have to be provided directly to facilities such as schools, pediatricians, and the health department. 

In 1991, the Lead and Copper Rule reduced the level of lead considered to be safe for drinking water from 50 ppb to 15 ppb. Over the last few years, the EPA has required water suppliers to test for lead in households in the communities they serve and to take action to reduce the levels of lead if they were too high. 

New England Water Works Association (NEWWA), Basic Chemistry of Corrosion Control Treatment to Meet the SWDA Lead and Copper Rule (1995) 12. 

The Lead and Copper Rule establishes an action level for lead at 15 ppb and sets up requirements for water suppliers to monitor drinking water and take measures to reduce the lead content if necessary. The following table lists the requirements and time frames set out in the law. 

It is important to recognize that an NPDWR is not necessarily the same as an MCL, in that protective and adequate regulation of a toxic substance may require technical modalities beyond reductions below an MCL. The amendments implicitly acknowledged this in 1412, allowing the EPA Administrator to regulate lead or other contaminants by means other than an MCL. This part of the Act provided the statutory means for U.S. EPA to regulate drinking water lead via the 1991 Lead and Copper Rule (LCR). 

Presently, the Lead and Copper Rule is undergoing review, and changes in requirements may emerge at the end of the process. 

In late 2008, the AWWARF published Contribution of Service Line and Plumbing Fixtures to Lead and Copper Rule Compliance Issues. This report found that from the sites in the US with lead services, that the lead service lines contributed from 50-75% of the lead in drinking water, onsite piping contributed from 20-35% of the lead in drinking water and that faucets contributed from 1-3% of the lead in drinking water. All other contributions, for the limited number of homes sampled, such as, the brass water meter fittings and the meter itself had lead contributions that were minimal. 

The vast majority of U.S. utilities were able to comply with the Lead and Copper Rule by 1) pH and alkalinity adjustment, most frequently to the pH range of 9-9.5 for systems with extensive lead piping 2) dosing of orthophosphate in the pH range of approximately 7.2 to 8 or 3) the formation of insoluble... 

In the US, a schedule for the removal of lead service lines owned by the water system is required by the Lead and Copper Rule, when the system continues to exceed the 90th percentile Action Level for successive monitoring periods. However, domestic lead pipes and residence-owned service line segments are mostly only removed at the discretion of the home or building owner. In Europe at the EU level, there is no regulatory requirement to remove lead service pipes nor domestic lead pipes, although regulations in the UK require a water company to remove their lead service line if the home-owner decides to remove their domestic lead pipes. 

It is important to note that large numbers of water systems in the U.S., having no lead service lines or interior lead piping, required some form of enhanced corrosion control as a result of the Lead and Copper Rule, due to a combination (not differentiable from the monitoring data) of leaded brasses and soldered joints in copper plumbing. Therefore, the significant lead release observed in the AWWARF study represented lead contamination from waters already adjusted for some corrosion control, and would not represent nearly a worst-case scenario as may be present elsewhere in North America or Europe. 

American Waterworks Association Research Foundation (AWWARF) (2008). Contribution of Service Line and Plumbing Fixtures to Lead and Copper Rule Compliance Issues. 

Rabin (2008) relates how old municipal water systems used lead pipes to dehver water to homes. This was recognized as a public health threat in the 1800s, and in the early part of the twentieth century municipalities began to prohibit lead service lines. This movement was countered by the Lead Industry Association (LIA), which began a public campaign to commend the benefits of using lead pipes. Problems remain to this day, as the federal Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) requires water companies to initiate lead water pipe replacement when lead levels in water exceed 15 parts per billion (ppb). But the LCR allows water utilities to replace only the public portion of lead pipes. The private portion of these pipes, from the main service line to a house, can be left in place. Renner (2007) describes that when partial replacement is undertaken, that disturbance results in a rise in lead levels in water. Millions of homes in the U.S. have lead service lines as part of their water supply systems (McCartney 2010). 

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