Water Pipe

For decades, residents of Carlos and Shaft in Western Maryland have captured their drinking water from a stream, pumped it into a concrete holding box and then, with only a shot of chlorine as a disinfectant, pumped it back into their homes.The system is so primitive and unreliable -- and frequently unsanitary -- that it landed the towns on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of locales with problem water.Now, thanks partly to that dubious distinction, the towns have qualified for more than $2 million in federal loans and grants to be used to extend the nearby Frostburg municipal water system to about 175 homes.

Westminster-area residents should run their cold-water faucets for up to 30 seconds before drinking or cooking with water from the tap, as sampling continues to show levels of lead above the acceptable federal standard.The lead isn't in the water supply, but is leached from pipes and solder along its path to the tap, said Paula K. Martin, superintendent of the city's water plant. Warm weather increases the leaching reaction."We don't believe there's an imminent danger, but it's something to be aware of, something to work with," she said.

The County Council, caught between a rock and a hard place, reluctantly gave way to the rock last week, deciding that two of nine families on Old Joppa Road who had requested public water hookups will have to do without.Between 1987 and August 1989, seven of nine homes on the street were hooked up to county water service. But the project stalled before the homes of Loy and Ava Heare and their neighbor, Mary Eber, could be hooked into the county water system.The problem? Rock. Lots of it. With 200 feet of pipe left to be laid before the two homes could be hooked up, county workers hit bedrock in the bottom of a stream.

You get up in the morning, stagger into the kitchen, hold the kettle under the faucet, turn on the water. Heat the water on the stove. Make baby a bottle: formula, warm water and a little lead.Lead is a metal -- cheap, malleable, long-lasting and corrosion-resistant. It's also highly toxic. At high doses, lead causes severe damage to the brain, kidneys, nervous system and red blood cells.Nothing new there. We've known that for centuries.But here's what's new: Low levels of lead -- levels HALF AS HIGH as the current Environmental Protection Agency limit -- are enough to permanently lower children's IQs. It turns out that children and fetuses are more susceptible because their brains and nervous systems are still developing and because their bodies are so much smaller.

Unexpected obstacles -- water and utility lines deep in Leakin Park -- have delayed until spring completion of the Gwynns Falls Trail, a 4.5-mile hiking and biking circuit through West Baltimore's most rugged terrain.Some of the obstacles had lain buried since Tropical Storm Agnes flooded Gwynns Falls Valley in June 1972.Clearing a path through Leakin Park down a hill from historic Crimea Mansion, construction workers discovered a set of utility pipes initially thought to be unused.They were very much in use. "Some were the pipes that supplied Catonsville with its water," said Gary Anderson, construction chief for Beka Industries, the Morrell Park-based firm building the trail.

A plumber repairing an underground water pipe at an Odenton house was burned yesterday when the heat from a torch he was using melted a natural gas line and caused an explosion that shook other houses in the neighborhood.Greg Rubenstein, 38, was flown to the Baltimore Regional Burn Center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center with second-degree burns on his arms, chest and face, a county EMS/Fire/Rescue spokesman said. He was listed in fair condition.The spokesman, Capt. Allan Graves, said Rubenstein was in a 4-foot-deep trench about 10: 30 a.m., repairing a water pipe that had burst at a home under construction in the 300 block of Ammunition Ave. in Seven Oaks.

In a muddy hole the size of a backyard swimming pool, archaeologists digging at the Naval Academy have found centuries-old pottery shards, brass buttons and mule jawbones that tell the rich history of a landmark Annapolis peninsula.The find, in the shadow of Bancroft Hall, was made last week when a backhoe preparing the academy grounds for new water pipes turned over damp soil containing chips of pottery and porcelain. The machinery has been traded for whisk brooms and clipboards.The Chinese porcelain, French gunflints and an American soldier's artillery button, among other artifacts, tell a story Micheneresque in scope.

Five rowhouses were demolished, 15 homes were condemned and 80 people were left homeless after a 5-foot water main burst early yesterday on Homewood Avenue near North Avenue, flooding streets with churning water 6 feet deep.No one was injured by the raging water, which ripped a huge hole in the pavement of Homewood Avenue, submerged marble steps and parked cars and washed away part of the 8-foot stone wall on the Greenmount Avenue side of Greenmount Cemetery."It was like the Mississippi River down there," said Cathy Brooks, 35, part of a family of four living at 729 E. 20th St. "You wouldn't have believed it unless you'd seen it with your own eyes."

Coming sometime this century or next to your Baltimore neighborhood: sidewalks cluttered with leaky water pipes, brown cubes in the icemaker and spotty water pressure that forces folks to choose between watering the lawn and flushing the john. The city is slowly having its aging water pipes cleaned and lined with concrete, and for the past six months, workers have been plodding their way through Guilford and Roland Park. In recent years, they've toiled in Sandtown-Winchester and the areas around Johns Hopkins Hospital and Penn Station.

MYSTERIOUS holes in pipes are leaking water -- and money -- from hundreds of South Carroll homes. The same thing is happening in Montgomery and Prince George's counties. The cause is unknown, despite abundant theories and numerous tests. But the common threads are public water treatment plants and copper water pipes. Carroll County is taking aggressive steps to solve the aggravating, costly problem. Surveys were sent to 7,000 customers of the Freedom water plant, asking about their plumbing histories and leak experiences.