Local customers suspect chloramines behind rusty pipes, degrading water heaters

Kinston-area resident Earl Oliver displays a series of items on his driveway: water filters that have become black with residue after only a few months; new, clean water filters to compare them with, and sections of galvanized pipe that are so filled with rust that it comes out in chunks.

Oliver suspects that the chemicals used to purify water at the Neuse Regional WASA plant are the culprits.

“It certainly is the water, it certainly is,” Oliver exclaimed. “Rust was inside of the pipe; it wasn't on the outside. That pipe isn't any different from pipes they made 10 years ago.”

Oliver and other Kinston residents have noticed brown water coming out of their faucets, rusty pipes, and they have had to replace their hot water heaters much more frequently, during the past two to three years.

The $95 million WASA plant went online in the early fall of 2008, providing treated drinking water drawn from the Neuse River to eight member communities in Lenoir and Pitt counties. The state required the shift to river water to allow the local aquifer time to replenish itself.

The water was initially treated with chlorine, but officials with NRWASA began adding chloramines — a combination of free chlorine and ammonia — in March of 2009 to cut down on the levels of disinfection byproducts that can result when treatment chemicals in the water interact with organic matter.

“The purpose of going to the chloramines is because we have these disinfection byproducts that are regulated by the federal government,” said Harold Herring, executive director of NRWASA.

Chloramines cut down on the levels of disinfection byproducts regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, byproducts that, if high enough, can cause cancer.

They also last longer than chlorine, making them a more effective “secondary disinfectant” as water travels from the plant to the customer.

“Chloramines have been used by water utilities for almost 90 years, and their use is closely regulated,” a 2009 EPA report on chloramines stated. “More than one in five Americans uses drinking water treated with chloramines. Water that contains chloramines and meets EPA regulatory standards is safe to use for drinking, cooking, bathing and other household uses.”

Chloramines are also more affordable for utilities to implement.

“So far in my system, and I think I can speak for most of the systems that are on WASA, it lowered them substantially.” Timmy Kennedy, public works director for Pink Hill, said of disinfection byproducts.

According to Pink Hill’s 2009 Drinking Water Quality Report, the two groups of disinfection byproducts regulated by the EPA — Total Trihalomethanes and Total Haloacetic Acid — were at a respective average level of 2 parts per billion and 1 ppb. The Maximum Contaminant Level for those byproducts is 80 and 60 ppb, respectively.

All local utilities must publish an annual water quality report, and they are available upon customer request.

Chloramines are known to have corrosive effects on water infrastructure, though, according to the EPA.

“The addition of monochloramine can make water more corrosive, which may lead to pipe corrosion and increased levels of lead or other contaminants in the water,” the agency report stated. “However, utilities can test water for corrosiveness and make changes to the water treatment process to address this problem.”

Corrosive effects

Oliver owns a number of rental properties in Kinston and Lenoir County, and has had to replace up to 25 water heaters in his different rental units during the past two years.

“We replaced between 20 and 25 hot water heaters,” he said. “Now I'm going to tell you, that's expensive.”

Oliver said he has replaced more hot water heaters in one year than he has in 30 years of managing properties.

Oliver has also installed a water filter in his garage, connected to the municipal water pipes, to clean the water coming from the street to the Yardly Lane house he and his wife share.

He has kept a used filter cartridge that is nearly black after two to three months of use. While the packaging indicates the cartridges should be changed every three months, Oliver stressed that there is not usually such degradation during that period.

“I try not to look at that water filter,” Oliver said. “When I go inside I'd rather not see it.”

Local plumber Ricky Stroud, owner of Ed Phillips Heating, AC & Plumbing of Kinston, said he has seen many more issues with water heaters since the WASA plant went online.

“The biggest problem we run into is the water heater itself because you very rarely have problem with the cold water side,” said Stroud, who has been with his company for nearly 40 years.

Stroud explained that rust is expected to build up and settle in a hot water heater tank, but the treatment chemicals cause rust to dissolve and move throughout the tank, causing it to corrode.

“We’ve got to them and flushed them and it didn’t seem to matter, two weeks later it’s back,” Stroud said. “It doesn’t have to be a real old water heater either. We’ve changed water heaters that are less than 10 years old because of this.”

Kinston resident Ginger Dixon said she has also had to replace her water heater in recent weeks after seeing discolored water.

“My hot water was dark brown, so that indicated to me that the inside of my hot water heater was rusty,” Dixon said.

Experts state water heaters should be changed every 10 to 15 years, and Dixon acknowledged that the heater that was in the house she moved into three years ago was aging and “it was probably around the time for it to be replaced anyway.”

Stroud said discolored water can be seen most often in homes occupied by one or two people who do not use the water as often, leading to more rust and sediment buildup in the pipes.

“The longer you run the heater the less obvious it is, because you’re diluting it with cold water,” he said.

During the process of replacing her heater, Dixon said she heard from about 10 other people who had to replace their units because of rust, which in some cases caused leaks.

She said some residents who had their heaters in the attic told her they had to have their ceiling replaced because of leaks.

“It’s cheaper for WASA to add chloramines, but the cost to the consumer has got to be a lot more,” Dixon said.

She also noted that she frequently sees fire hydrants around the city being flushed to remove buildup, and wondered about the extra cost to the city, purchasing water that ends up being wasted.

“WASA using chloramines is a bad decision for Kinston, and they save money, but all the residents and taxpayers in Kinston have to spend more money because of it and that’s the kind of problem we look to our City Council to solve,” Dixon said.

City weighs in

Councilmen Joe Tyson and Robbie Swinson said during a recent council meeting that they had heard from a number of residents who had to replace their water heaters and have brown water.

Many of those residents live in older structures, such as public housing units that are 40 to 50 years old.

“With everything going up you don’t want people to keep spending money, but some of them probably need to be replaced, are outdated,” Swinson said of hot water heaters.

WASA will temporarily switch back to chlorine starting Tuesday, for a period of about four weeks. The change is recommended by state agencies for utilities that use chloramines to ensure water mains are clean and free from bacteria.

“Hopefully going back to the old process, that will hopefully alleviate some of the problems (with corrosion),” Swinson said.

Kinston Water Resources Manager Steve Miller said the free chlorine is used to clear out any bacterial buildup that was not attacked by the chloramines. The system will be flushed starting Tuesday when the chlorine is added, and again in mid-April when the chloramines are reinstated.

“All members will be doing aggressive flushing during this process because you’re got to get the chlorine through the whole system,” WASA Director Harold Herring said.

Swinson said the current situation with chloramines is not good for either residents or the city.

“Hopefully WASA can get everything straightened out and we can work with them to alleviate the problems consistently happening back and forth to the residents,” he said.

Public Services Director Rhonda Barwick told the City Council recently that “now that we are using chemicals to treat the water . . . those chemicals will eat at the (water heater) tank more so and the tanks won’t last as long.”

Anyone who has a problem with their water should contact their local provider, and staffers will come out to flush the water lines.

Miller said city staffers have done more flushing recently than in the past, but “I’m not sure how much of it we can attribute to chloramines and how much we attribute to using surface water, rather than well water.”

One Public Services employee has been reassigned to flush hydrants in about 140 parts of the city where there is low water usage and older cast-iron pipes.

“We do do more flushing than we used to; in some areas we’ve seen iron levels increase a little bit and other areas we’re just seeing dirty water, and we’re trying to get that cleared up,” Miller explained.

The staffer rotates through the flushing locations about every two weeks; Miller said an average of 2 million gallons is released during that period, about 5 percent of the city’s daily water usage.

A few automatic flushing units have even been purchased for the hydrants, to save the employee some time.

“We don’t have to pay additional money to (WASA) for the water that we’re flushing,” Miller said. “We’re covering that by additional water from our well system.”

Kennedy, public works director for Pink Hill, said he has not heard complaints about corrosion from customers.

“On a general basis, we flush pretty much all the lines at least once a month anyways,” he said. “I hadn’t had any feedback from any customers about their water heaters. I tried to flush at least once a month even before WASA.”

Miller said Kinston officials are looking into capital improvement funds to replace older pipes. PVC plastic pipes react less to the chloramines, and in areas where metal pipes have been replaced with PVC, there is a difference.

WASA response

Herring said staffers at the treatment plant monitor the pH of the water and add a “corrosion inhibitor” to help cut down on corrosion.

“You have to keep in mind, too that the city of Kinston has over 200 miles of water mains and a lot of their system has been built since the 1920s on up,” he explained. “The way to correct this problem is just by doing the flushing that the city of Kinston has been doing for the last two years.”

Herring said chloramines are used by water utilities throughout the state, including in Greenville, Goldsboro, Raleigh, Jacksonville and elsewhere.

“The state doesn’t have a position on chloramines so public water systems are free to make the decision if they want to use it or another means to treat,” said Laura Leonard, public information officer with the N.C. Division of Environmental Health, part of the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Leonard said 62 public water systems in North Carolina use chloramines. She also said the NRWASA plant has not “had any violations for anything,” during its two-and-a-half year existence.

“The city’s constantly flushing their mains to help alleviate the problem, but it’s just something that you’re going to have to deal with,” Stroud said. “The state’s the one that mandated that you can’t pump (water) out of the ground anymore so you’re just going to have to deal with it until it’s gone.”

David Anderson can be reached at 252-559-1077 or danderson@freedomenc.com.

BREAKOUT BOX:

FYI:

For more information on chloramines, visit the EPA’s website at water.epa.gov/lawsregs/rulesregs/sdwa/mdbp/chloramines_index.cfm

For more in-depth scientific information, see the EPA’s “Chloramines Q&A’s” report from 2009.

For more information on the Neuse Regional WASA, visit nrwasa.org.