Russ Zimmer

@RussZimmer

Four out of five public water systems in New Jersey reported some level of lead in the drinking water delivered to homes, businesses and schools from 2013 through 2015, an Asbury Park Press investigation found.

But the tests might reveal more about the dangers inside individual properties than serve as an indictment of water supplies.

In New Jersey, older homes and aging infrastructure are typical — and with them lead piping and plumbing, long since outlawed in new construction because of lead hazards. The duty falls on utilities to "engineer" water that won't exacerbate lead exposure.

American consumers, perhaps more than ever, are mindful that they cannot trust the water.

The safety of the water Americans drink, cook with and bathe in has come under closer scrutiny as details emerge about the many missteps in Flint, Mich., where a crisis over lead-contaminated water has attracted worldwide attention — amid signs the problems were preventable.

A USA TODAY NETWORK analysis of EPA records identified almost 2,000 water systems nationwide where testing has shown excessive levels of lead contamination over the past four years. The systems span all 50 states and serve some 6 million people.

It is a timely inquiry.

A new Rutgers-Eagleton poll finds that a majority of New Jerseyans are concerned about the quality of the water they drink, although most continue to say that their own tap water is "good" or "excellent."

"I've been buying bottled water since Flint," Howell resident Anne Cahalane told the Press. "I realize my water could be fine. I realize the bottled water could have contaminants. But somehow I just feel a little bit safer with bottled water."

YOUR TURN: What steps have you taken to protect your family from lead poisoning? Let us know in the comments, on Facebook and on Twitter.

But New Jersey's own problems in this arena have come into the spotlight, most recently with Newark Public Schools telling the state last week they were shutting off water fountains in response to test results that showed unacceptably high readings of lead in tap water throughout the system.

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Now, some 17,000 Newark children will be tested for potential lead-poisoning; lead exposure can cause extensive developmental delays and a lifetime of health problems.

The Press requested and received more than 18,000 compliance tests submitted to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection between 2013 and 2015. These tri-annual tests covered nearly 1,400 water systems, ranging from golf clubs serving mere hundreds to water districts serving hundreds of thousands of people.

What we found:

One in six systems produced at least one sample above the EPA Safe Drinking Water Act standard of 15 parts per billion (ppb).

More than 28 percent of public water systems yielded at least one sample above 10 ppb, a lower threshold that the World Health Organization favors.

If you lower the bar to 5 ppb — because no amount of lead is good — about 10 percent of all the samples taken in New Jersey would fail.

While there are high test readings from all over the state, the public water systems in New Jersey are in "good shape," according to NJDEP spokesman Bob Considine.

"There is no question that lead in the water is a serious matter, but that’s why the safeguards are in place through EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule which requires regular testing for lead and educating the public on minimizing lead in its drinking water," he said.

But some advocates urge that more be done to rid old homes of lead plumbing – at considerable cost.

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Brick: A case study

According to water suppliers and the EPA, the individual tests in New Jersey might be indicative of a problem present in a single neighborhood or home and not representative of a larger, systemic issue.

For example, internal sampling within the Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority's distribution system – has never revealed any lead, according to Joe Maggio, director of water quality.

Nonetheless, in the summer of 2014, 31 out of 34 tap water samples taken in Brick showed some presence of lead; half of those contained more lead than the EPA standard allows, according to the state data. Another round of testing last fall revealed that the problem had not been solved.

“The lead is not coming from our water," Maggio said. "It’s entering our water when it hits the pipes inside of a home.”

Indeed, an increase of chloride in the Metedeconk River, the town's primary water source, was the culprit, according to Maggio.

The influx of chloride, which the town believes came from road salting in the winters, was making the water more corrosive, empowering it to shave away at lead joints in household plumbing.

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Their initial fix – adding a new phosphate to ease acidity – failed for unknown reasons. The township consulted with experts and developed a new plan of attack, one that produced encouraging results last month, Maggio said.

“I’m going to knock on wood, but so far we’ve had a lot of success with the new treatment program," he said. "We really think we have the solution.”

Water systems are required by the EPA to focus their testing regimens on areas they suspect may produce higher lead results, according to an agency spokesman. These compliance tests are geared toward finding lead and copper dangers. The starting place for both: old homes and infrastructure.

"(The EPA) acknowledges that it's much easier to manage the issue of the lead in people’s homes at the water source," Maggio said. "That’s where the regulations are focused, as opposed to going to people’s homes and saying you need to switch out your plumbing.”

The danger lead poses

Lead is an insidious threat.

Lead in drinking water presents a threat to the nervous system, the brain and the kidneys. Children and fetuses are most susceptible to these dangers. You cannot see, taste or smell lead in water.

No amount of lead in water is beneficial, experts say. Moreover, it is unclear what level of contamination triggers negative impacts.

"Nature does not impose clear demarcations," said Jerome Nriagu, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health. "There is no scientific basis for choosing 15 (ppb) versus 14 or 13 or 12 (ppb) as the threshold for lead toxicity."

Rhiannon Robinson, a Bayville mother to two young children, worries about water contamination, in the context of drinking, cooking and bathing her kids.

"It's not something I constantly worry about but it's always there in the back of my mind," she told the Press.

But lead in drinking water is just one contributor in the home to lead poisoning: lead-based paint, old toys and soil that has been contaminated are a few other sources, according to the EPA.

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The Press reported last year how the state — Democratic and Republican policymakers alike — had diverted more than $50 million since 2004 from a fund meant to protect children from the hazards of lead poisoning. Instead, the money was used for other government spending. Thhe funding was left out of Gov. Chris Christie's latest budget proposal as well, but the state Legislature passed another bill this week to replenish the fund.

NJDEP spokespeople were quick to point out that instances of lead poisoning in children in New Jersey have been in a steep and steady decline.

In its latest report, the New Jersey Department of Health found that 378 children between 6 months and 26 months old had lead levels in their blood high enough to trigger public action. That's less than a half-percent of all kids tested in that age group and a big improvement from 2000, when nearly 4 percent of children under 3 years old were found to have an elevated level of lead in their blood.

But the standard for "level of concern" was lowered by the CDC in 2012. Advocacy groups note that more than 225,000 New Jersey children under the age of 6 since 2000 have tested above that threshold and kids in 11 New Jersey cities had higher lead levels than their counterparts in Flint.

Older homes are more likely to contain lead

According to state officials, it is rare in New Jersey for water itself to be polluted at its source.

Instead, lead usually leaches into water as it winds its way through the distribution system and into a home — often as a result of plumbing inside of a house or older distribution lines, both of which may have lead soldering used to connect the pipes.

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That is the emerging story in Flint, where no lead was found in the source water. Officials there failed to properly treat a new source of water that was highly acidi. The water then ravaged the lead pipes throughout the aged industrial city, according to ongoing inquiries.

New Jersey American Water estimates that about 3.5 percent of its service lines contain lead. The Passaic Valley Water Commission, which had more samples test above the EPA standard than any other system in the state, told the Press that it has between 200 and 800 lead service lines remaining in its network, which once had 34,000 such water mains.

Nationally, there are about 6.1 million services lines containing lead, according to estimates by the American Water Works Association. That means that about 40 percent have been removed since the EPA adopted limits on lead and copper in drinking water in 1991.

However, in New York and New Jersey, only about 20 percent of these pipes have been removed from their networks, the AWWA's report shows. The authors suggest this is because of the age of homes in the Northeast.

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The typical home in New Jersey is 50 years old this year, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and was built well before the federal government forbid the use of lead solder in household plumbing.

"Congress banned lead in our water pipes 30 years ago (1987). I don’t know about you, but the house I live in was built in 1920," said Ann Vardeman, program director at New Jersey Citizen Action. "For sure, there is lead in my house."

Statewide, about 80 percent of homes were constructed before 1990, Census data shows. The problem is even more acute in northern New Jersey.

"Obviously, lead from pipes or from solder is an issue in older buildings and older cities, not just in New Jersey, but around the country," said Considine, the NJDEP's spokesman.

A home with lead plumbing leaves its residents susceptible to danger, but stripping a home of all the lead is cost-prohibitive solution for most homeowners. At least that was the prevailing thinking prior to Flint.

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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pledged to use the power of the federal government to get rid of lead during a debate face-off with her primary opponent, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, in Flint earlier this month.

"We will commit within five years to remove lead from everywhere. ... Water, soil and paint — we're going to get rid of it," she said.

To Vardeman, a federal program that provides incentives or otherwise pays homeowners and landlords to re-pipe old homes is the best solution.

"I think it's an absolutely fantastic idea," Vardeman said. "This is dangerous and most people don’t know that it’s happening in their home."

How much that would cost is unknown.

What's being done about it?

The NJDEP encourages utilities to use corrosion inhibitors or adjust the acidity of the water, making it less likely that lead or copper can be eaten away and absorbed by the water on its way to a home.

Last year, 14 samples in the Passaic Valley Water Commission's system exceeded the EPA's Lead Action Level. Eighty-one of the remaining 93 samples had some presence of lead, according to data obtained from the state.

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The commission, which serves a population of 315,000 in northern New Jersey, draws treated water from a plant in nearby Little Falls. It then stores that water in open-air reservoirs, an outdated method that executive director Joe Bella says prevents them from employing modern day corrosion controls.

Bella said the commission is in the process of a $135 million project to enclose its reservoirs and has replaced nearly all of the lead service lines, which once made up more than half the lines in its distribution system.

New Jersey American Water says about 15 percent of its 9,000 miles of water and sewer mains are more than 100 years old.

"In the last three years, more than 160 miles of main in our system has been replaced or rehabilitated, an investment of more than $770 million," according to NJAM spokesman Richard Barnes.

After Flint, consumers know they have to be diligent as well.

The Raritan Headwaters Association, a water quality advocacy group in western New Jersey, has been sponsoring a home water testing program for years, but never experienced the level of interest that the Flint water crisis has created.

“People were suddenly alerted to the fact that even if water comes out of the faucet clear and looks clean there could be contaminants that affect their well-being," said executive director Cindy Ehrenclou. "It looks like the country is waking up to the potential of contamination that they never thought of before.”

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Russ Zimmer: 732-557-5748, razimmer@app.com