While communities across the country are preparing to replace all lead pipes within the next decade, new regulations have little effect on Arlington.
The Environmental Protection Agency last week issued a final rule on lead pipes that is estimated to affect up to nine million homes — a multibillion-dollar project meant to substantially improve health outcomes, especially in children.
No infrastructure changes are required in Arlington, however, as the county has had a lead-free water distribution system since operations began in 1927, county spokesperson Kiara Candelaria Nieves told ARLnow.
“Arlington County meets the requirement of the updated EPA rule, and our distribution system and customer service lines are lead free,” she said.
County staff reached this conclusion after consulting historical records and visually inspecting over 9,000 of Arlington’s water service lines, which are small-diameter pipes connecting a building’s plumbing to water mains.
“For the service lines that were not visually inspected, we applied Virginia Department of Health (VDH)-approved statistical analysis methodologies to determine that these were not made of lead pipe,” Candelaria Nieves said.
The county also created an interactive inventory of its 37,000 service lines, complying with new requirements for all U.S. utilities to categorize the material of their systems’ pipes.
Water provided via the Washington Aqueduct also uses corrosion control treatments to prevent lead from leaching from internal plumbing or lead solder used on copper pipes, Candelaria Nieves said.
Before the establishment of Arlington’s drinking water system, county residents relied on wells for water while outhouses and septic tanks handled wastewater. Two acts of Congress in the 1920s allowed the county to begin receiving water from the Potomac River — an event reportedly celebrated with a parade and buttons saying, “YES We Have Water.”
Arlington’s water still comes from the Potomac and is treated at the Dalecarlia Water Treatment Plant in D.C. The county is estimated to have about 500 miles of pipelines pumping about 23 million gallons a day.
