Philadelphia Drinking Water Contains Lead, Class Action Claims

A Philadelphia resident has taken it upon herself to stand-up to the city on behalf of a proposed Class alleging that the city’s drinking water contains lead and the contamination is not being addressed.

Plaintiff Eleni Delopoulos claims that the city has placed residents at risk by allegedly skewing results of lead contamination testing of Philadelphia’s public water system.

Not only have there been allegations of skewed testing for lead, Delopoulos also claims that the city has only partially replaced lead pipes and that construction projects have led to the disruption of water service lines.

“The city has known and acknowledged that, for years, construction projects and water main repairs have caused elevated and unsafe levels of lead to contaminate the water traveling through its residents’ homes, and it’s time to come clean,” Delopoulos’ attorney Steve Berman of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP said in a statement.

The class action lawsuit claims that in 2014 the Pennsylvania Department of Health found that out of the nearly 36,000 children in Philadelphia under the age of seven, more than one in every ten exhibited elevated blood lead levels.

Potential health issues caused by lead includes disruption of the nervous system including “neuropathy motor nerve dysfunction, weakened immunity to disease, renal failure, gout, hypertension, muscle and joint pain, memory and concentration problems, and infertility” as well as cancer, according to the complaint.

Delopoulos’ lawsuit was filed in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County and seeks certification of a Class consisting of “All residents of the City of Philadelphia who have resided in an area where the City has replaced the water mains or meters between January 1, 2006 and the present.”

Delopoulos accuses the city of “rigging its lead testing procedures” by purposefully testing homes that are low risk and by altering the tests of high-risk homes by removing the aerator on the faucet and running it for two minutes before collecting the sample, while letting the faucet run slowly to fill the sample bottle.

“Such a practice is not only deceptive, reckless and unethical, but plainly violates federal law,” the class action lawsuit states. “EPA regulations require a city the size of Philadelphia, which has thousands of residences with lead services lines, to collect samples from exclusively high risk homes.”

To mitigate lead problems in the pipes, the class action lawsuit claims that the city treats the water supply with zinc orthophosphate in order to prevent pipe corrosion and leaching lead, but it is not 100 percent effective and can fail, especially when disturbed by construction work or other repairs.

Philadelphia’s concerns piggyback on those in Flint, Michigan, where state and local officials are currently facing a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and ACLU with accusations that they violated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

An employee of the city of Flint along with two officials from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality were criminally charged with felonies in April. The charges included tampering with evidence as well as misconduct charges.

Delopoulos is represented by Scott Alan George and Christopher A. Seeger of Seeger Weiss LLP and Steve W. Berman, Elizabeth A. Fegan and Mark Vazquez of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP.

The Philadelphia Water Class Action Lawsuit is Eleni Delopoulos v. City of Philadelphia, Case No. 160503980, in the Court of Common Pleas of the State of Pennsylvania, County of Philadelphia.