30% of City Buildings Have Lead in the Water Pipes

An estimated 30% of pipes delivering water to New York City buildings contain lead. Is your co-op or condo among them?

There's a new map to help answer that question, Gothamist reports. 

Using Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) data, the New York League of Conservation Voters has created a map that shows there are 124,197 lead pipes in the New York City and 571,351 lines that do not contain lead. There are also 124,917 pipes that could contain lead. The map’s release comes one month after President Joe Biden’s administration announced that all lead pipes carrying drinking water in the country must be replaced in 10 years.

“If you have a relatively older home, [or] the plumbing is before the 1980s, you definitely have a concern for sure, and those should always be looked at,” says Joshua Klainberg, senior vice president at New York League of Conservation Voters.

Homeowners, including co-op and condo boards, are responsible for replacing their building's water pipes. The DEP estimates that replacing all of New York City’s lead pipes will cost $2 billion – or $10,000 to $15,000 per line.

As with so many environmental threats, this one has an economic subtext. The map shows that lead pipe hotspots are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, such as Jamaica, Queens, and Pelham-Throgs Neck in the Bronx, where approximately 25% of each neighborhood's drinking water pipes contain lead. Just over 40% of lead lines are located in disadvantaged communities. Overall, residents living in single or multi-family homes built before 1961 – the year lead pipes were banned in New York City – are most likely to have lead service lines, according to the New York League of Conservation Voters.

The 2014 water crisis, in Flint, Mich., drew widespread attention to the dangers of lead pipes, and it inspired the brilliant 2018 book The Poisoned City by journalist Anna Clark. Flint residents complained of weird-tasting, smelly water, and elevated lead levels were detected in children. There is no level of lead that is deemed safe to human health. When the dense, heavy metal enters the body, it can make its way to every organ in the body, resulting in impaired brain function and decreased fertility.

“There are a lot of things that people can do to protect themselves immediately before the time comes to actually have that pipe replaced,” Klainberg says. New Yorkers can order a free testing kit from the city’s DEP to check lead levels in the water. The agency also has information on what to do if lead is detected in your water. Filters are available that extract lead. And qualifying low-income New York City residents can apply for grants to cover the cost of work to replace lead pipes.