“This is very important that they are giving the community an opportunity to get water filters and they care enough to do it. We’ve been getting bottled water,” said Teona Wakefield.
Another Homewood resident, Audrey Moses, said her household has been going through about three cases of water a day.
“Nobody wants lead poisoning,” she said. “The water doesn’t taste good—we’ve been buying bottled water for years. So, this will probably save me a lot of money, but I still have a water bill.
In a press release a week earlier, Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner called for more urgent action on the city’s lead issue.
“While encouraging commitments have been made by PWSA to begin to replace a small number of lead lines annually, this falls far short of the urgent action required to ensure no child in our city is being subjected to an invisible toxin that risks lifelong harm,” she said. “The fact is that no level of lead in our water is safe, and this problem will only be solved when the lead lines are gone.”
Mayor Bill Peduto did not comment on the higher lead samples, but on Jan. 18 he issued an executive order adopting recommendations of his Blue Ribbon Panel on restructuring Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority governance.
“(Because) the mayor understands that it is important to make long-overdue changes in the way The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) is governed and invest in our water and sewer infrastructure, he appointed the Blue Ribbon Panel in March of 2017 to advise the city on the selection of a consultant to provide an independent review of the current state of PWSA and recommendations for improvement,” the order reads in-part.
“(While) the Blue Ribbon Panel report stated that PWSA has made significant progress in recent months, PWSA, working with its new Board of Directors, must continue to pursue aggressively its transformation into a high-functioning, customer-oriented organization and its plan to repair and replace the existing water supply infrastructure.”
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