CORRECTION

A Jan. 31 article on Durham's failure to meet federal drinking water standards for lead contamination gave an incorrect date for a proposed community lead summit. An organizational meeting for the summit is set for Wednesday. The summit itself will be held later.

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DURHAM -- After initially claiming it passed, Durham has given state regulators lead test results that show the city's drinking water failed to meet federal health standards by a wide margin.

The revelation came less than a week after the state Division of Environmental Health issued Durham a notice of violation for withholding testing data from an October report that incorrectly showed the city well within federal Safe Drinking Water Act standards.

That report failed to disclose nearly 700 lead results, including a "special internal investigative study" that monitored changes in residential lead levels last summer as the city tinkered with water treatment chemistry. The city not only kept the study results from public health officials and state regulators but also in some cases from families living in the homes shown to have high lead levels.

City officials repeatedly denied any conclusive link between treatment chemicals and the lead found leaching from household pipes -- statements their own internal testing showed to be false.

Lead exposure can cause brain damage and other developmental difficulties. Ingesting lead in even tiny amounts can be toxic, especially for pregnant women and children under 6.

When all the 2006 test results were reported as required, the city failed. Once state regulators confirm those results, a determination expected by Friday, the law requires Durham to retest selected homes twice within the next year and increase efforts to tell residents how to avoid exposure to the metal.

The city must also show how it will control chemical conditions that can make drinking water too corrosive. Improper water chemistry increases the likelihood of lead leaching from old plumbing fixtures and pipe solder. Drinking water service lines that contain lead will have to be replaced.

Durham's water supply has been under increased scrutiny since April, when high levels of lead were found in a child's blood. County health officials discovered that water from the kitchen faucet in the South Durham apartment where the child lived was 60 times the federal limit.

The city was forced to restate its 2006 lead testing results after a Dec. 22 article in The News & Observer showed Durham failed to follow state and federal rules that require all lead test results be shared.

City Manager Patrick Baker held a news conference Tuesday to discuss the recalculated testing results. He said the city did the undisclosed special study to "proactively" address the lead issue. He repeated assertions that the city failed to share the damaging test results only because of an "unfortunate lack of understanding" of the rules.

The city plans a "lead summit" Feb. 14, and the first round of new testing will begin within the next month, the city manager said. However, Baker declined to say that the city will go beyond what's explicitly required under the rules and make any extra effort to retest the same homes previously found to have high lead levels.

"We're going to follow the letter of the law," Baker said. "Since we have been accused of not following the letter of the law, we'll do what [state officials] ask us to do."

Baker made no apology for the testing fiasco. His comments, as well as the wording of an accompanying news release, angered one elected official at the event. The statement was headlined: "New Compliance Results Show City Above Lead Action Level; City Increases Water Testing, Education Efforts For Citizens."

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