The Syracuse, N.Y., Dept. of Water placed two employees on administrative leave Oct. 31 for allegedly conducting tap water lead monitoring tests improperly earlier this year. City officials say they may have collected some samples using water from faucets on the exterior of homes, which the officials said likely resulted in the large spike in lead levels observed in July.
The city’s action is the latest development in an ongoing dispute between community residents and the city after lead levels in some households were found to be more than double that found in Flint, Mich., during its drinking water crisis. Local residents and medical providers, backed by national environmental advocacy groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, are asking city officials to declare a state of emergency that would give the city access to federal funds to help address the problem.
The city contends that declaration is unwarranted because it has already secured $22.8 million in state funding to replace more than 3,000 lead service lines within the next year. Its water department has increased the number and pace of lead service line replacements in recent years and will continue to do so until all lead pipes are replaced, says Greg Loh, city chief policy officer. He says affected residents were notified and a public media briefing announced the findings,
City officials announced in August that routine monitoring in July had found elevated lead levels in some homes. A New York Freedom of Information Law query by the groups and others showed that one home in 2024 had 2,520 parts per billion of lead, and another in 2023 had a reading of 775 ppb.
More than 14,000 homes in Syracuse are believed to have lead pipes.
But the city says those results are outliers. “Results from the second half of 2024 sampling at 115 properties came in under EPA action levels.” Loh said: He added that after resampling 24 of 27 properties where elevated levels were found, only two were above U.S. Environmental Protection Agency action levels. “Results from the next round of EPA’s required testing are expected soon and will guide the next actions,” he added, noting that the city is taking action to follow EPA requirements, in coordination with the state and the Onondaga County Health Dept.
Erik Olson, Natural Resources Defense Council senior strategic director for health, environmental health, says the non-profit has filed another state Freedom of Information Law request to better understand how the city is conducting its monitoring. “We’re a little skeptical about how the number could come down from 70 ppb, a seven-fold decrease, in a matter of months,” he said. “Syracuse has now announced that it plans to provide point-of-use filters to help remove lead for some city residents, although we have not seen evidence that this is being widely done. We are now in discussion with partners in Syracuse and the state to determine next steps.”
Virginia Tech University engineering professor Marc Edwards, who brought attention to the Flint drinking water crisis in 2015, says that if samples were taken from hose bibbs, the tests could very well have resulted in artificially higher numbers because the water from outdoor faucets often contains lead. “It could definitely cause a false alarm,” he told ENR.
In 2023, the Biden administration unnecessarily declared a state of emergency in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands due to lead levels more than 100 times the EPA action level. Those test results later proved to be inaccurate, Edwards says.
