Travis Anderson, the water contractor for the town of Turkey, reported to board members this week that all of the sampling for lead and copper in water lines belonging to the town had been completed.
Results were not back, but Anderson broke down what led to the samplings and why it matters for the health of citizens during the Tuesday meeting.
He said that around two years ago, the state was put under “basically a time frame that every municipality in the state of North Carolina had to do what was known as a lead and copper inventory of what they had in their (water) system.” In the next phase, residents were asked to fill out a voluntary questionnaire, listing what type of plumbing they had in their homes, he pointed out.
“Nobody’s gonna force you to go and replace your plumbing if you don’t want to, but then, if you put in there that, ‘Hey, I have old galvanized lines, or I have copper lines, and my house was built in the early ’80s, we would know.’ Well, that was before they banned lead-based solder. So, that’s where you can get that leaching into your drinking water, and it’s sitting there in your home plumbing.”
In 1986, the Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act, which prohibited “the use of pipes, solder, or flux that were not ‘lead-free’ in public water systems or in plumbing in facilities providing water for human consumption. The United States Environmental Protection Agency website notes that in 1986, Lead-free was defined as “solder and flux with no more than 0.2 percent lead and pipes with no more than eight percent.”
The World Health Organization has stated that lead poisoning “can affect multiple body systems and is particularly harmful to young children and women of childbearing age.” Lead can accumulate in the body over time, and developing fetuses can become exposed. “(It) was attributed to more than 3.5 million deaths globally in 2023, primarily due to cardiovascular effects. The World Health Organization website also notes that “there is no level of exposure to lead that is known to be without harmful effects.”
Following Anderson’s discussion, Mayor Rudy Blackburn presented estimates to the commissioners to repair holes along a storm drain running down East Faison Avenue.
“We had a storm drain where a little hole had formed in the cement pipe; that’s just normal wear and tear. … When it’s raining, and it’s wet, the dirt wants to wash into that hole. … So you have to dig it up, you patch the hole, and then you just fill the dirt back in,” Blackburn explained afterwards.
“This would need to be done as soon as possible, would you say?” Commissioner Nicole Mobley inquired.
“Yeah, because the holes are getting bigger,” town clerk Teresa Frack stressed.
“I know that we have estimated, but if we don’t foresee any other large sums coming out of the Powell Bill, since it’s so early in the budget. … If it needs to be done, and there’s no other way around it, and you think that this is the best estimate we have coming out of the Powell Bill, then I do make a motion that we proceed,” Mobley recommended.
The motion passed unanimously.
The storm drain has since been repaired, and Blackburn mentioned later that the whole process took about two hours.
During the meeting, Blackburn handed out the repair estimates to commissioners, but did not talk about them openly. Asked after the meeting, what the cost would be to repair the damage, the mayor declined to provide the funding total saying “it was not public information.”
Information, however, about any town spending is public information and should be provided in an open meeting, according to the N.C. Open Meetings Law.
Frack, when called Friday, said the cost was around $4,000.