Seattle Public Utilities finds ‘low levels’ of lead in some samples

The City of Seattle says its water is safe to drink.

After two days of testing in five Seattle homes, Seattle Public Utilities confirmed Sunday that the city’s water is nothing to be concerned about.

“We sampled from five locations – multiple litter bottles of each site – capturing water from faucets all the way to main,” Drinking Water Quality Manager Wylie Harper said. “We’re seeing low levels of lead in the samples that we’ve run and collected over the past couple of days.”

Harper told KIRO 7 that the city found levels below two parts per billion, which is well below the federal standard.

SPU started testing after learning last week that Tacoma Public Utilities had detected high levels of lead in four water samples taken from galvanized steel service lines last week.

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

“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,” a talking point in a draft released to KIRO 7 News stated.

The water advisory only applied within Seattle city limits, but that still affected 500,000 customers.

In Seattle, this translates to roughly 2,000 homes, which were likely built between the 1920s and 1950s.

SPU says the potential issue in its service area was probably limited to galvanized service lines. Galvanized pipes are iron pipes used for homes built before the 1950s.

Meanwhile, a Tacoma preschool is on the list of potential sites that may have lead in the water. The school has not been named.

The News Tribune says the city’s public utility has pinpointed 1,700 locations where it believes gooseneck connectors may be causing the problem.

Thousands of worried customers have contacted the Tacoma utility.

“The vast majority of those, we’ve been able to communicate back that they don’t have lead goosenecks,” Tacoma Public Utilities Deputy Water Superintendent Chris McMeen said. “A few do, and we are letting them know that.”

McMeen says more water testing is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.

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