NEWS OF THE WEEK GOVERNMENT
& POLICY
DRINKING WATER REVIEW PLANNED High lead levels in Washington, D.C, water trigger broad research study
A
SURPRISING JUMP IN LEAD
levels in Washington, D.C, drinking water is being blamed on corrosive water resulting from a regimen of treatments needed to address contaminants. The levels have forced EPA to reexamine how it sets acceptable lead levels and treatment protocols for municipal drinking water, said Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA acting assistant administrator for water, at a congressional hearing on March 5. Last week, the agency also announced a plan that is likely to make the District's water system the nation's most studied. The scheme creates a 32-member expert team to examine the city's water treatment program and propose a treatment plan by midApril. It also requires free bottled water or filters to be provided to 23,000 homes and businesses with lead service pipes; replacement of lead pipes; and a water sampling program for homes without lead pipes since they too, have shown high lead levels. The city has a history of water problems with lead, but the severity of the current levels was discovered in routine tests in July 2002, EPA says. Further testing showed high lead levels for twothirds of some 6,000 homes—in some cases, more than 20 times above action levels of 15 ppb. T h e discovery resulted in rounds of finger pointing by EPA; elected District officials; t h e Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for water treatment; and the District's Water & Sewer Authority, which sells and distributes the water. Adding to the agencies' woes is a lack of pubHTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
lic trust, the result of their failure to announce the problem, which was made public only last month in news accounts. District Mayor Anthony Williams told reporters that he blames the corrosion on the addition of chloramines to the city's drinking water. Chloramines began to be added in November 2000 to reduce carcinogenic disinfection by-products created when high levels of chlorine, the primary bacterial disinfectant, is added to drinking water. In the 1990s, the District faced several incidents ofbacterial contamination, which led briefly to EPA recommendations that residents boil drinking water. The chloramines are required by EPA, says Thomas P Jacobus, the Army
Corps water treatment manager, who says that cWoramines are not responsible for the corrosion. However, other water experts disagree and recommend that phosphate-based corrosion inhibitors be added, apath chosen by other cities. Jacobus, however, rejected that choice because it would require the District's sewage treatment facility to remove the phosphates before discharging treated sewage to the Potomac River. Along with water testing, the area has begun a large blood testing program, mostly for children.-JEFF JOHNSON
DIGGING Some 23,000 lead water service pipes will be replaced in the District of Columbia.
SCIENCE
Hubble Reveals Earliest Galaxies Yet Seen
P
eering back further into space and time than ever before, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured this image of an assortment of oddly shaped galaxies forming early in the universe's history. The new survey is sensitive enough to glimpse a period only 400 to 800 million years after the Big Bang—"within a stone's throw of the Big Bang itself," according to astronomer Massimo Stiavelli at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Against the backdrop of controversy over HST's possible funding cutoff by NASA, institute astronomers unveiled
the new images on March 9. On hand at the event was staunch HST supporter Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who vowed to continue her efforts to save the telescope. Focusing on a dark section of the sky in the Fornax constellation, HST took four months to collect the data, opening a window on some 10,000 new galaxies. The images were taken using two cameras installed on HST by astronauts in 2002. Deep space images taken by a previous incarnation of HST cameras, in 1995 and 1998, went back only as far as a billion years after the Big Bang.— ELIZABETH WILSON
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