How did drinking water in northeast Fresno homes go bad? What the investigation found
In early January 2016, Fresno city officials began picking up on social media chatter among northeast Fresno residents who were concerned about rusty, discolored water coming out of their pipes. Starting Jan. 25, the city began testing the water in five homes around an area bounded by Chestnut Avenue on the west, Gettysburg Avenue on the south, Willow Avenue on the east and Copper Avenue to the north. Test results showed everything checked out fine, including pipes between the water main and the homes. However, the tests did find iron, zinc, copper and in a few of the homes, lead.
More than 100 concerned residents gather inside the Kastner Intermediate School cafeteria in March 2016 to hear from city water officials on what’s causing the discolored water in northeast Fresno homes. An “exhaustive” 90-day study revealed the problem appears to be have been pinned down to three things: corroding, unwrapped galvanized piping; dissimilar metal corrosion; and soil erosion.
Then Fresno Public Utilities Director Thomas Esqueda told a neighborhood meeting of 200 residents in June 2016 that poorly made galvanized pipes were corroding and leaking iron, zinc and, in some cases, lead into their homes. Forty Fresno homes had lead levels above federally approved levels. Esqueda said the solution was to replumb the entire home.
City officials in July 2016 expanded their investigation to include up to 15,000 homes. The problem appeared to be related to corrosion of galvanized pipe or fixtures containing lead within homes in the area receiving the treated surface water, or a blend of surface water and pumped groundwater.
The chief of Fresno’s water operations was placed on administrative leave in July 2016 over discrepancies in the reporting of water quality issues and the ongoing controversy over problems with discolored water in several hundred homes in northeast Fresno and issues of lead contamination in water coming from residents’ faucets in several dozen homes.
In late July 2016 a unanimous Fresno City Council banned the use of galvanized pipe for plumbing in new construction and remodeling projects as signs pointed to it being the prime culprit in causing the discoloration and lead contamination of water in homes across northeast Fresno.
The first of two class-action lawsuits was filed in September of 2016. The residents are suing the city and others over discoloration and lead in water coming from faucets in their homes.
City officials released the results of an extensive water test in September 2016: Nearly 300 homes in northeast Fresno had lead coming from their faucets, including nearly 120 in which lead levels exceeded the acceptable threshold set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A second group of northeast Fresno residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the city in May 2017 alleging it caused the problem of discolored and contaminated water in their homes. The issue revolves around the use of water provided by the city’s Northeast Surface Water Treatment Facility where canal water from Millerton and Pine Flat lakes is treated to distribute to about 15,000 homes and other water customers throughout that part of the city. Both suits claim the city knew before it built the plant, from a consultant’s 1998 report, that a change in the water supply could cause problems for homeowners..
On July 30, a Fresno County Superior Court judge granted the residents permission to allow its class-action lawsuits against the city to move forward for a trial.
This story was originally published August 5, 2021 at 12:44 PM.
