Seattle Public Utilities: Customers should run water before drinking it

Seattle area water customers are being asked to take precautions against possible lead contamination in their water pipes.

After hearing of a situation involving lead in the water in a few homes in Tacoma, Seattle Public Utilities released a news release.

As a temporary precaution—SPU is asking all Seattle residents to run their water for two minutes before using it if the water has not been run for more than six hours.

SPU believes the potential issue in its service area is limited to galvanized service lines. A list of homes that SPU believes are serviced by galvanized pipes will be posted on SPU’s website.

Here are other points to know about this situation:

• Although Seattle has no connection with Tacoma’s water system, Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) has immediately begun work—both in-house and with our state regulators—to understand the extent to which our system could have a similar problem.

• SPU believes the potential issue in its service area is limited to galvanized service lines.

• Seattle Public Utilities is contacting a small number of home owners today in areas across the city, to sample water at homes serviced by galvanized lines, to see if there are elevated levels of lead. Once the samples are taken, results could be available in as soon as five days.

About high lead levels found in Tacoma: 

On Thursday morning, Tacoma Water officials announced they detected lead above the EPA recommendations in four homes south of Lincoln High School.

Tacoma Water pinpointed that gooseneck pipes, made out of lead, may be to blame.