Dear Billy T and Somerville News Weekly Speakup Line,
I am extremely disturbed to recieve a notice today from the city regarding the HIGH LEVELS OF LEAD IN OUR WATER.
The health risks to infants, children ,pregnant woman and seniors especially with illness can be serious. This is not like lead in paint where exposure is a result of construction, ingestion and other ways. This is about drinking water, cooking water and water added to food.
The city takes this a lot lighter than protecting bicyclists who purposely place themselves in harms way.
A simple notice sent with no indication of importance going only to homeowners. Leaving many other residents vulnerable to exposure.
To top it off they reccomend running your water for two minutes to flush out the lines. Water and sewer fees thats cost are already excessive.
Please place this information in your news paper since there are many readers who will not recieve the notice.
If the elected officials really cared the billboards for the street festivals would be up and running informing everyone at risk. So much for protecting the citizens of Somerville.
Feeling poisoned in Somerville
I appreciate your efforts for writing the article. Thanks for sharing with us.
So sad.. this is year of 2020 and there are still
so many problems… taxes are crazy and when you sell your property the state will be possibly adding on a tax of $10,000. Where is Gods name has all of this money been going!?
Somerville is such a sad shit show today!
The city has many ways to protect the residents and their families if they choose to do so.
A robo call in the areas where the levels were high. They use these for road closures for the various Mayors events during the year along with road races.
We also have in excess of 21 elected officials who can relay this very important information to their supporters.
I am sure they have numerous emails linked to the parking department for snow emergencies and street cleaning.
Lets face it anything negative they will be slow to share no matter what it may be since there may political fallout.
The technology that they all rave about and we pay for is useless unless its to their advantage.
Residents need to call them to task on this. I followed the bouncing ball to see if home does have lead coming in and I could not find my property even listed.
Just keep paying those expensive water and sewer bills.
I echo the concern above. The complete lack of information on the Somerville city website is unacceptable. It’s like no one put 5 minutes of thought into this.
Also tests from “Fall 2019” is very vague. When were the tests? When did the city know the results of the tests? Before or after November 5th? Days and weeks count when pregnant women and young children are potentially drinking harmful water. Why are we not finding out until January?
I am not an expert but most houses have had the outsides lines changed. Years ago they soldered the copper pipes with lead. I would not know how much would get inside of the pipe to get into the water. I know it became illegal to use lead maybe thirty years ago. Not exactly sure. So copper that old or older would have lead to some degree in it. Also lead would not have been used for a water line inside the house. Mostly brass and copper would be used and in some cases iron pipe. The brass and iron would have been threaded and no need for lead.
Could this be due to pipes inside each individual house? That would explain why it may be good to run the water for 2 minutes and why it was found in only some houses. I sure hope it’s not in all the underground pipes, construction is already bad enough…
I put a whole house water filter in my house 2 years ago. I have to change the filter every 3-5 weeks because it gets blocked with contaminants. The city now sends out notice about “what YOU can do” yet the city is doing nothing. How about a free whole house water filter with filter reimbursement.