‘Time bomb’ lead pipes set to be removed. But first water utilities have to find them

Water utilities have never been required to thoroughly inventory lead pipes except in a crisis. Health experts warn problems with these “underground poisonous straws” can arise out of the blue.
It took three years for officials to notice lead was seeping into the city’s drinking water.

Missouri regulators had given the green light in 2014 for Trenton to start adding monochloramine to its drinking water to disinfect it without the harmful byproducts of chlorine.

But by 2017, the city noticed something alarming.

Lead levels in drinking water in the northwest Missouri town — population 5,609 — had spiked.

Over the next two years, one-quarter of the homes tested exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s action level — 15 parts per billion — at least once.