Caught my city's water quality report fudging the numbers on lead testing

I was digging through our 2023 annual water report from Austin and noticed they only sampled 30 homes out of 200,000 connections. Turns out they cherry picked older houses with copper pipes and skipped the newer builds with brass fixtures that can leach lead. Has anyone else spotted weird sampling methods in their local utility reports?

2 comments

2 Comments

wren23022d ago

My buddy in Dallas found their utility tested water from the treatment plant instead of actual homes, which completely masked the lead levels from old service lines.

the_claire22d ago

Drove past a water testing station in my neighborhood last week and saw them taking samples from a fire hydrant instead of an actual house. Like, what's the point of testing fire hydrants? That water's been sitting in pipes nobody drinks from. Bet my lead levels are a fun surprise compared to whatever they pulled from that hydrant.