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Gladewater's Water Department working to find cause of lead in drinking water

The Gladewater Water Department is working on finding the source of lead in its drinking water supply.

The Gladewater Water Department is working on finding the source of lead in its drinking water supply.

According to Steven Matlock, the Director of Public Works in Gladewater, it is an issue that could take weeks, even months to investigate how some people living in Gladewater ended up with lead in their water supply.

Tommy Linwood, who has lived in Gladewater for the last four years, says drinking water out of the tap has never been an option.

"The water, you know the color of it, it smells bad, it sometimes smells like chlorine, then I look at the color of it," Linwood explained.

To exacerbate the concerns, Linwood and many others have about the drinking water, the city issued a notice Monday, informing its nearly 6,500 customers of elevated lead levels in its water supply.

Matlock sayas water is usually tested for lead and copper once every year.

While most sinks inspected had low levels of lead in the drinking water, some had high levels, above the Environmental Protection Agency's action level of 15 parts per billion.

"Twenty samples were collected, three of those from peoples houses hat they collected exceeded the maximum contaminant level," Matlock added.

The lead was found during the last two weeks of September. According to Matlock, after it was found, the city is required to send the samples to a third party lab.

He says that process usually takes about two weeks. From there, the results are analyzed and the state's regulatory agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality(TCEQ), gets involved. TCEQ then requires the city to notify its citizens and further investigate the problem.

According to Matlock, the city notified consumers after the entire process wrapped up.

"If you have an aged infrastructure where plumbing was done a certain way, 30-40 years ago and lead wasn't recognized like it was years ago, then there is a chance for it to happen, to have lead in the fixtures," Matlock added.

While acute and long term low level exposure to lead can pose health problems over time, Dr. Cynthia Ball, a board-certified occupational medicine physician and an environmental specialist at UT Health East Texas, says water is one of many places where lead can be found.

"Lead is in the environment and drinking water is just one of the ways that you can be exposed to lead," Ball said. "Our goal is no exposure, that's impossible, our goal is no risk, that's also impossible."

"We put these rules and regulations in place to try to protect the most susceptible of the population," Bell added.

While Ball does not want to make light of the situation, she says when it come to how we perceive risks, it is important to put things into perspective.

"When we have control over the situation, we are much more likely to take risks and do things that are greater risk than this exposure to lead in the water," she said.


The investigation into what caused the lead to leak into the city's water supply is ongoing.

According to Matlock, another test for lead and copper will take place during the first few months of 2019.

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