Water Quality Report
Each year, Avon Lake Regional Water publishes and distributes to all customers in Avon Lake its water quality report. This report provides water quality statistics from the previous year as well as information about how Avon Lake Regional Water keeps your water safe and plans for the future. Click here to view the 2023 Water Quality Report.
Archived Editions
Corrosion Control Effort
Though no problem has been identified and in an abundance of caution, Avon Lake Regional Water began adding phosphate to the water as part of its corrosion control effort on September 11, 2017. Across the State of Ohio, water treatment facilities implement corrosion control efforts to prevent corrosion of their water pipes. The most common approach is to add phosphate to the water to coat the inside of the pipes to prevent corrosion. The phosphate reacts with the pipes to form an insoluble coating to protect the pipes. The amount of phosphate added to the water is a minimal amount that will not impact the quality or taste of the water, and is well within guidelines approved by the Ohio EPA.
For those who might be concerned, the amount of phosphorus in one cup of water is about 0.05 mg of phosphorus in a cup of water. For comparison purposes, a cup of skim milk has about 250 mg of phosphorus.
Adding phosphorus to the water is an extra protection to our customers for keeping the water lead free. Avon Lake Regional Water will continue to add lime (which also helps to reduce corrosion)during our water filtration process. Water sources themselves do not contain significant amounts of lead. Lead levels in drinking water exist primarily because of the pipes that bring clean water into homes. In Avon Lake, these pipes are often the service lines that bring water from water mains under your street or yard to your water meter or home, but there may be some Avon Lake homes with lead in their indoor plumbing/fixtures, as well. As a service to our customers, we remove and replace any lead service lines as we find them.
Avon Lake Regional Water tests our water regularly in accordance with EPA standards and reports our water’s content to federal and state regulators, as well as our customers via our annual water quality report.
If you are ever in an older home or are otherwise concerned about lead, let the water run until it’s cold before using it, and only use cold water for cooking or drinking (EPA).
Additional resources
Lead and water (Centers for Disease Control)
Protect Your Family: Lead (EPA)
Current EPA regulations for water utilities regarding lead and copper in drinking water (EPA.gov)
Who is most at risk?
When talking about drinking water, homes most at risk for lead in pipes/drinking water are those built before the 1940s. Some of these homes were built with lead service lines or lead pipes as plumbing. At a lower risk are most houses built from 1940 until about 1990. These used lead solder with copper piping as plumbing. With the least risk are homes built after 1990, and possibly as early as 1987. They were built using either lower-lead/lead-free solder or plastic pipes.
If lead is ingested, it can affect people of any age, but young children are most at risk. High levels of lead in tap water can cause health effects if the lead in the water enters the bloodstream and causes an elevated blood lead level. Most studies show that exposure to lead-contaminated water alone would not be likely to elevate blood lead levels in most adults, even exposure to water with a lead content close to the EPA action level for lead of 15 parts per billion (ppb). Risk will vary, however, depending on the individual, the circumstances, and the amount of water consumed. For example, infants who drink formula prepared with lead-contaminated water may be at a higher risk because of the large volume of water they consume relative to their body size. (cdc.gov)
Lead poisoning can adversely affect nearly every system of the body, but particularly the central nervous system, especially for unborn and young children whose bodies are just beginning to develop and grow. Because lead poisoning often occurs with no obvious symptoms, it frequently goes unrecognized. However, lead poisoning is easily diagnosed with simple testing, and in most cases, it can be treated. (epa.gov)