Copper: The Right Choice for Lead Service Line Replacements 1

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1 Copper: The Right Choice for Lead Service Line Replacements 1 Proven long-term reliability As many of copper s competitors are quick to point out, copper is an ancient material. There is no denying that. Copper has been used to deliver safe drinking water to civilization for thousands of years. Copper s competitors say this like it s a bad thing that new technology always beats old technology just because it s new. They need you to believe that new is always better. They say that their products are cheaper, and that cheaper equals better. And, they expect you to believe it. But new and cheaper do not necessarily equal better. Better equals better. When it comes to piping materials for underground water service lines better means copper and it has 2,500 years of successful use to prove it. New does not always equal better Copper has seen many new materials come and go over the past 2,500 years. Lead pipes once favored for their durability and ductility were the go-to material for service lines, but are now known to pose potential health effects even at the very lowest levels of exposure to the drinking water they convey. Unlined iron, steel and galvanized steel pipes are robust but hard to install without multiple joints that can leak, and are easily clogged with mineral deposits in many waters. Early PVC plastic pipes that became brittle when left exposed to UV light or chlorine in the water system and, were found to leach vinyl chloride monomer, a known human carcinogen. Polybutylene plastic pipes experienced wholesale failures in building plumbing systems due to embrittlement and stress fractures. Polyethylene service lines are being removed by the thousands due to oxidative damage from chlorine and other disinfectants in drinking water. New polypropylene plastic systems are beginning to show failures due to interactions with copper ions present in water systems. And polyethylene and PEX plastic systems have also been shown to leach various chemicals to drinking water, with unknown health effects, resulting in taste and odor issues. Copper is not without its faults. While not common in most U.S. waters, the metal can leach into the drinking water from copper piping in specific water conditions. A copper system that isn t properly designed, installed and operated may also run the risk of developing pinhole leaks but this can be said for any piping material. It is safe to say that there is no perfect piping material, but there is also no doubt that only one material has withstood the test of time, copper. Longevity and proven reliability is the true strength of copper. Its extensive long term use has allowed users to study, understand and apply the material appropriately to ensure long-term system reliability and safety. The properties of copper piping, what is in it, what can leach from it, the associated potential health and safety effects, and how that leaching can be controlled are quantified and well known.

2 Copper: The Right Choice for Lead Service Line Replacements 2 Can that be said for the new plastic materials? Of course not. Most of the knowledge on the health, safety and reliability of piping materials comes from longterm use and service. A history that plastics do not have. One of the reasons is that when problems develop in the use of one plastic the plastics industry switches to a whole new plastic solving one problem but starting the learning curve to the next problem all over again. New equals unknown. Proven reliability chosen by the majority of utilities and municipalities The lure of the low cost of plastic piping is clear and compelling. Why spend more money than necessary to deliver water from one point to the next? Reliably? Day in and day out for years on end? Responsible water utilities and municipalities shouldn t ask the first question, without answering the second and third questions. The decisions made on purchasing and installing underground water infrastructure today are borne out in service for decades in the future. Make a bad decision now and the cost to rectify it can multiply drastically when you have to dig up streets and lawns, shut off water service and disrupt customers lives. That s why water utilities don t make these decisions lightly, and they carefully weigh the pros and cons of material benefits, reliability, installation costs, service life and long-term cost in addition to the initial cost of purchasing material. In this regard, the trend is clear. Through the late 1980s and 1990s, many municipalities trying to keep pace with the construction boom turned to various plastic piping systems for their water service line installations. Copper s market share slipped from 75 percent through the mid-1970s to 50 percent of all water service installations by the year 2000, as municipalities turned towards the lure of lower cost. However, as the building boom continued through the early 2000s, this trend began to change. Utilities and municipalities began to struggle with leaks and loss of water issues in plastic service lines. One by one water utilities began to reevaluate their material choice and in wholesale began to turn back to the reliability of copper. By the end of the decade the material trend reversed course and copper once again accounted for 80 percent of all water service line installations. This wasn t one massive knee-jerk reaction. These were conscious decisions on material choice made one-by-one by individual water systems after careful analysis of benefits and costs in the absence of any marketing by the copper industry. What makes this even more significant is that these decisions were made at a time when the cost of copper was on an almost historic rise, which indicates that utilities found reliability trumps short-term cost in their overall infrastructure investment. A survey of water systems in 45 states, with 155 municipal water utilities responding indicated a clear trend back to the use of copper for water service lines.

3 Copper: The Right Choice for Lead Service Line Replacements 3 Of the responding utilities, 66% indicated that they have, or have had problems with their plastic service line installations while fewer than 20% indicated the same for copper. What did these utilities say about using copper? In the early 80 s we used plastic, but it was not a good product. We had to replace it all, at great expense, less than 10 years later. We went back to using copper, and decided we would only use copper from then on. (Vancouver, WA) We allow high density polyethylene as a cost concession to developers. We use copper for everything the Utility installs because the Maintenance Division insists on it. We would much prefer to have only copper used. (Charlotte, NC) [We choose copper] because we had an instance where gasoline migrated through PE pipe. (Rochester, NY) We allowed high density polyethylene for around 10 years; we recently stopped allowing it because of our history of failures with it. Whole subdivisions have had to be torn up to remove it. Historically, copper has been the best material. When we used polyethylene and polybutylene, we had problems. (Little Rock, AR) We moved to copper in the 1940s. It has been a good material material of choice In the 1980s, we used high density polyethylene which regularly developed leaks. We stopped using it, and are replacing now with copper. (Richmond, VA) These comments are echoed from city to city, from large to small. Santa Cruz, California, Seattle, Washington and representatives from water utilities in other cities across the U.S. cited their systematic replacement of thousands of plastic service lines throughout their systems. The common reason cited for why their utility tried plastics in the first place was its low material cost. It was clear that many of them tried this route only to find it offered a false economy, and then returned to copper. The false initial-cost economy Water utilities and systems are entrusted with and regulated to provide the highest quality water to the public while exercising prudent financial responsibility in using ratepayer and public funds to maintain a long-lasting, efficient and inexpensive water delivery and treatment infrastructure. So it is in the utilities interest, as well as the interests of their customers to make wise financial decisions for the life cycle of the infrastructure as well as the first cost.

4 Copper: The Right Choice for Lead Service Line Replacements 4 So, when talking about service lines how significant is the first cost? On average, lead service line replacements across the country can range from just a few thousand dollars to upwards of $10,000, depending on the length of the service line, ground conditions, etc. For estimates sake it is common to use $5,000 per service line as an average cost. The average service line length in the US is approximately feet long. The cost of piping for this average service line would be approximately $250 for copper, and $80 for plastic, a difference of $170 per service line on average. This initial cost savings represents only 3.4 percent of the total cost of the service line replacement. For each individual line, this doesn t seem very significant and with the vast experience with copper it would seem a no-brainer to stick with the proven performer. However, for a utility looking to change thousands of service lines, this adds up. For five thousand service lines, the initial cost savings would be $850,000, which starts to seem significant, but is still only 3 percent of the total investment in the service line replacement program (using the $5,000 average a $25 million project). Still, it s hard to turn away from an $850,000 up front savings. THAT is the false economy. Based on the utility experiences cited in the survey mentioned previously, problems with plastic service lines can require significant replacements in years. Forgetting about the time value of money, and using the same costs for materials and labor that service line replacement would now have gone from a $170 per service line savings, to a $5,080 loss ($5,000 labor for the second replacement, plus $250 for a new copper line, minus the original $170 supposed savings). That s a $508 per year per service line cost over 10 years, versus the $17 per year upfront cost of going with copper in the first place. In total, for the 5,000 service lines that adds up to a $25.4 million loss, which far outweighs the potential upfront cost savings of $850,000. That s what utilities that switched to plastic and then back to copper learned the hard way. Reliability trumps first cost. Health effects and safe drinking water: the real story Copper s competitors go to great lengths to try to indict copper from a health effects standpoint after all it is regulated by the USEPA Lead and Copper Rule and we all know that lead is bad, right? I wouldn t go so far to say lead is bad; after all we rely on it in batteries for myriad applications that we would be lost without. But, it is well established that there is no safe level of lead in our bloodstreams and that ingestion of lead through water, lead paint, gasoline fumes, etc. should be avoided as t poses real, chronic health risks to the public, especially children. Likewise, copper can also present human health risks if too much is consumed, but unlike lead, copper is a necessary nutrient for human life and development. We need to regularly ingest copper through food and drinks to remain healthy. Copper is essential for the development of bone, connective tissues, brain heart and other

5 Copper: The Right Choice for Lead Service Line Replacements 5 organs. It is essential in the development of red blood cells and is necessary in the absorption of other minerals in the metabolism of cholesterol and glucose. However, too much copper can also pose a health risk. For the majority of the population, these health effects are acute and do not cause long-term health issues since our bodies employ systems to absorb, regulate and excrete copper to maintain a healthy balance.. For the majority of the population, the level of copper in drinking water that care result in an acute effect (e.g. gastrointestinal distress) is well above the regulated level of copper allowed in drinking water; 4 to 5 times higher. The conservative regulatory level included in the Lead and Copper Rule is a maximum of 1,300 micrograms per liter of water, which is 86 times higher than the 15 micrograms per liter maximum for lead. This level was set to protect against chronic effects such as liver and kidney damage. For the majority of the population, these effects are only possible following long-term exposure to elevated concentrations; however, a very small part of the population those that have a genetic condition called Wilson s Disease, which affects an estimated1 in 30,000 people in the U.S. cannot automatically regulate the levels of copper in the body. This can lead to a long-term buildup of copper and increase the likelihood of these chronic effects. These numbers may seem like too much information, but they help put the health effects into context. The allowable 1,300 micrograms per liter for copper, in many cases, is orders of magnitude greater than those for other drinking water contaminants, including chemicals and organic compounds that can be associated with plastic. However, more important is the fact that the conditions that may cause copper leaching as well as the potential health effects of copper are long-established and well-known. The same cannot be said for plastics. Recent studies on the leaching from plastics materials indicates that they can leach chemical compounds that are difficult to identify, that are inconsistent between type of plastic and manufacturer, and most importantly are chemical compounds that are new with little to no information on how they might effect human health. This is particularly problematic because only compounds that are currently known to leach from piping materials and that have known and established health effects information are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The problem is not what we know, it is what we do not yet know. In terms of health effects, there is one other thing that we do know in underground installations, plastics have been known to allow organics, pesticides, petroleum products, and other contaminants to penetrate through the wall of the piping and into the water being delivered through the system another route for potential negative health effects. Copper is completely impervious to penetration of the tube wall by outside contaminants and will not convey contaminants from outside the piping into the water system.

6 Copper: The Right Choice for Lead Service Line Replacements 6 Who is choosing copper now? As municipalities and water systems look to replace lead service lines, many have examined the technical and cost-benefits of copper versus plastics as a replacement choice, and have chosen copper. Lansing, Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; St. Paul, Minnesota; Sandusky, Ohio; Washington, DC; Spokane, Washington; Cincinnati, Ohio; Green Bay, Wisconsin among many others have already chosen copper as the right choice for lead service line replacements. Copper: the right choice for water service lines In the end, old, new and less expensive are just words. Better equals better, and that means copper for water service lines. Copper is natural and bacteriostatic. No other material has the long-term, proven experience of reliable, leak-free installation in the widest variety of systems and settings, protects the water system from outside contamination in the underground environment, and does so with proven life-cycle value. Plus, 100 years from now when it s time to replace that copper service it can be recycled straight back into another copper pipe or product without any loss of its beneficial properties. The choice is obvious.