How Safe is Wayland's Drinking Water?

WAYLAND, MA - The Flint water crisis and other national events have caused Wayland residents to question the quality of their own drinking water but the water division released a report to help ease their minds.

In 1991 the Environmental Protection Agency published the "lead and copper rule," which requires water systems to regularly monitor for levels exceeding the action level in more than 10 percent of customers' taps, the water division siad.

The testing has never revealed lead in Wayland water sources and the consistent safe numbers prompted MassDEP to grant to town a waiver allowing water division to perform tests every three years.

The sole source of drinking water for Wayland is groundwater from the Sudbury, Assabet and Concord River Basin. This source has never tested positive for lead but copper can be found naturally at very low levels. This number is well below the MassDEP action level.

Since the early 1990s Wayland has been chemically adjusting the pH of drinking water to make it less corrosive. This keeps it from breaking down pipes.

Wayland's water division was established in 1878 and during that time lead pipes were used to connect underground water mains together. Full length lead pipes were never used in Wayland: instead iron pipes were connected using 2-foot pieces of lead pipe.

Records suggest all of these "lead links" were replaced with plastic in the 1980s. The Flint water crisis has prompted Wayland officials to perform a review and make sure all of this lead was removed from the system.

Lead solder was commonly used in home construction until 1986 and the Lead and Copper testing program has identified all homes in town that were built using this material. Residential sampling is routinely performed at sites randomly selected from those locations.

• See the full report>>>