How a private water company brought lead to Pittsburgh’s taps

Credit: AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar

“The levels in Pittsburgh are comparable to those reported in Flint”

In the summer of 2015, Metropolis Magazine named Pittsburgh one of the world’s “ most livable ” cities and gushed about its infrastructure, “The city has more vertical feet of public stairways than San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Portland, Oregon, combined.” But the magazine hadn’t done its research.

Around the same time, the city’s water utility was laying off employees in an effort to cut costs. By the end of the year, half of the staff responsible for testing water throughout the 100,000-customer system was let go. The cuts would prove to be catastrophic.

Six months later, lead levels in tap water in thousands of homes soared. The professor who had helped expose Flint, Michigan’s lead crisis took notice, “The levels in Pittsburgh are comparable to those reported in Flint.” The cities also share something else, involvement by the same for-profit water corporation. Pittsburgh’s layoffs happened under the watch of French corporation Veolia, who was hired to help the city’s utility save money.

Veolia also oversaw a change to a cheaper chemical additive that likely caused the eventual spike in lead levels. In Flint, Veolia served a similar consulting role and failed to detect high levels of lead in the […]

Full article: How a private water company brought lead to Pittsburgh’s taps