Manistee Lead Safe

The Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act has changed to better protect the health of our citizens. New water sampling rules have been added to better detect possible lead in your drinking water. These changes require communities, including the City of Manistee, with lead service lines and older housing stock, to do more sampling. This new sampling method is expected to result in higher lead results, not because the water source or quality for residents has changed, rather, because the Act has more stringent sampling procedures and analysis.

The City of Manistee customers are fortunate because we enjoy an abundant water supply. Our water source is groundwater from two natural aquifers. Four large water wells pump the water to two 500,000 gallon water towers. In 2020, we pumped 283,317,000 gallons of water. 

The City has over 3,000 service connections. Of those, 1351 are copper, 9 are HDPE, 170 are galvanized, and 24 are cast or ductile. The materials in 1480 are unknown at this time. We will be working diligently over the next few years to identify the constituents of the remaining connections.

The City of Manistee conducts periodic testing of tap water in homes for lead and copper. In recently collected samples from 20 homes in the City of Manistee, three (3) of the samples tested exceeded the 15 parts per billion (ppb) Action Level of lead established by the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act. The Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) evaluates compliance with the Action Level based on the 90th percentile of lead and copper results collected in each round of sampling. The lead 90th percentile for the City of Manistee’s water supply was 28 ppb, which exceeds the Action Level of 15 ppb. For the next calendar year the City will be collecting 40 samples (increasing from 20), every six months and reviewing the results to determine if corrective actions are necessary to reduce corrosion in household plumbing.