No Records of Lead Pipes in Burlington Homes, Says DPW

Thousands of homeowners and renters will soon receive a notice from the town, but Department of Public Works director, Brian White, wants to reassure residents no change in water quality occurred to trigger these notices and there are no records of lead pipes in Burlington.

The mailings will be sent in light of a result of a revision of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s lead and copper rule, which has been in effect for decades. As a result, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection has instituted a rule requiring municipalities to notify homes whose water service pipe materials are listed as “unknown.”

Burlington has been sampling and testing water since 1992 and has cataloged the service coming into each home during meter replacements and when houses are demolished and rebuilt, says White, and no lead has ever been documented. Burlington also treats the water to prevent leaching as a precaution.

Buildings constructed after the federal ban on lead pipes are assumed not to have lead, but those built earlier don’t benefit from the same assumption, and in Burlington that’s about 4,700 of our 10,000 households.

“Nothing has really changed. This isn’t a new contaminant we’ve found,” says White, recognizing that the EPA and DEP efforts at increased transparency might lead residents to question the quality of their water.

You can learn more about the town’s Lead Service Line inventory program and its findings on the DPW website, and the mailings are expected to arrive in homes any day. White says concerned residents can find water testing kits at stores like Home Depot, but reiterates there is no new contaminant and, while the intent of the mailing is to raise awareness about the health effects of lead, the town has not found, in several decades of testing, inspecting, and constructing water mains, results or documentation or documentation to indicate the presence of lead in Burlington water.