On an early morning, a quiet Denver neighborhood was temporarily transformed into a construction zone. A boring machine on the road outside a home pointed a long, thin drill bit at a sharp angle toward a hole in the ground. It鈥檚 going to make a path for a new water service line.
All the commotion is for a singular purpose: to reduce the amount of lead flowing into Denver homes.
鈥淧reviously, the technology was pulling (the old line) or open trench excavation, which is not customer friendly,鈥� said Denver Water鈥檚 Alexis Woodrow. 鈥淧eople do not like their entire yard dug up.鈥�
A man grabbed a big coil of copper line and brought it into the home. Another contractor took out an electronic locator to help guide the boring machine operator.
鈥淭hey are essentially boring in a new line and then pulling out a copper (line) so they leave the lead abandoned in place,鈥� said Woodrow, who manages the program. 鈥淭hat's often because we can't pull it out, or it's just more efficient to put in a new line.鈥�
This is just one of many work sites for the utility鈥檚 鈥� a nearly $670 million project designed to replace lead service lines with copper ones in the Denver area at no cost to the customer.
Lead is toxic. states it can cause brain damage in children, as well as increase the risk of a miscarriage. Denver Water isn鈥檛 delivering lead-laden water to customers, Woodrow said, but old household plumbing and service lines can leech lead into that water and cause problems.
鈥淭here were homes in the Denver Water service area where lead levels were elevated and the corrosion treatment that we were doing was not sufficient enough to create that protection that they needed,鈥� she said.
In 2012, Denver Water exceeded set by the Environmental Protection Agency, coming in at 17 parts per billion. Service lines are owned by the customer, but the utility felt the need to do something. The city researched effective treatment solutions and found that changing the pipe as well as increasing the pH of the water was their best bet.
Denver Water has found nearly in the city, primarily in homes built before the 1950s. That鈥檚 roughly 220 miles of pipe, according to Denver Water officials. The condition of about 17,000 lines is still unknown.
Since starting the Lead Reduction Program in 2020, the utility has replaced . They also sent Brita pitchers and filter replacements to homes that are still waiting to get their lines replaced.
鈥淲hat we were giving to them through this program was a chance at health and safety,鈥� Woodrow said. 鈥�(We鈥檙e saying), 鈥榊ou are likely to have a lead service line, so here's what Denver Water is going to do to protect you.鈥欌��
These replacements come in the wake of the when the city changed its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Pipes corroded and there were . Lead levels were the lead action level set by the EPA in most of the homes, while others were in the hundreds or thousands for parts per billion.
It put the dangers of lead in drinking water in the national spotlight. So why weren鈥檛 Denver鈥檚 lines, and others, replaced sooner?
Siddhartha Roy is a professor at Rutgers University and has done research on the Flint Water Crisis. He said one reason could be that lead was the plumbing standard in the turn of the 20th century when many cities were growing rapidly.
鈥淐ities had mandates that, 鈥楬ey, if you want public water, you have to use a lead pipe,鈥欌�� he said. 鈥淭here was an industry push. There was a as hard as it is to believe that鈥t will poison you, but lead will last thousands of years.鈥�
Woodrow with Denver Water said even as the dangers came to light, everything was still evolving and utilities were not sure what the best solution was at the time.
鈥淚 think there were a lot of questions within the industry, and also in public health, about how lead in drinking water kind of fits in the whole scale of lead exposure, and how serious it is,鈥� she said.
It took until the late 1980s and until the late 1990s for . But utilities didn鈥檛 want to replace or fix the expensive pipes, as one line could cost to replace. Washington D.C. had its . Utilities sometimes covered it up, . Roy said many cities , or extra testing steps to minimize the problem.
鈥淵ou had steps like, 鈥極h, flush (the water) for a few minutes the night before you took a sample in the morning,鈥� and that lowers lead levels,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat made it appear that the problem was not as worse as we thought.鈥�
This fall, the introduced a stricter policy, where cities have to remove all of their lead pipes . Cities will also have to comply with the new lead action level of .
Some local utilities have already gotten financial help from the EPA and the Biden administration to get started on this work. Denver Water received from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to speed up this process. The utility was originally paying for its Lead Reduction program on its own with its water rates, bonds and hydropower sales.
Roy said he鈥檚 cautiously optimistic.
鈥淭he question is financing,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he question is organizing this at grand levels, coordinating. There's so much to be done鈥his is the single biggest policy jump on improving lead in water in more than 30 years.鈥�
When lines do get replaced, it can be revolutionary. Claire Thomas lives in a historic home built in 1890 in the Curtis Park Historic District near the Five Points area of Denver. She got a water filter from the utility and never expected any sort of replacement.
鈥淚t was just, this is our way of life,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e drink from the Brita, and just kind of accepted that.鈥�
Thomas and her partner cook a lot and have friends over often. They'd end up using more water than their small filter could handle.
鈥淚n reality, we've probably been drinking water that has lead in it because we've been overusing our filters,鈥� Thomas said.
When she first heard from the utility that her lines were going to be replaced, she was elated.
鈥淚've been in a lead water house for so long, I was so excited,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat same day we returned to the post office with our water samples.鈥�
She got her line replaced at the end of August. She was shocked at how quick the process was and how kind the workers were, cleaning up the street within a week and being very careful within her home.
鈥�(I) feel really lucky moving into this house and a year later being able to have normal water,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd as I say that, I realize that that's a weird thing to have to be thankful for, but here we are.鈥�
Denver Water has about 1,000 more replacements to finish before the end of the year. It plans to work in East Denver in 2025 to stay on track with the goal of finishing the whole project within 15 years.
To find out if you have a lead service line, you can enter your address on . Homeowners with questions can call the utility call center at 303-893-2444.
This story was produced by KUNC, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado鈥檚 Center for Environmental Journalism.
