Due to a slight elevation in the amount of toxic lead in the water of some of its customers, the Providence Water Supply Board yesterday announced it is launching a mandatory public-education campaign to encourage customers in Providence, Johnston, Cranston and North Providence to flush their drinking water pipes each morning.

Water users are advised to run their cold water until they can feel it get colder -- that usually means all the water sitting in the pipes overnight has been flushed away.

The education program focuses on some 25,000 retail customers that have lead service pipes connecting their homes to water pipes under city streets.

The health risk posed by the very low levels of lead are considered minimal, with the warnings being issued out of an abundance of caution.

The utility has about 300,000 people drinking its water in the four metro area communities. Another 300,000 people drink the water it wholesales to East Providence, Warwick, Greenville, Kent County, Smithfield, Johnston, Lincoln and Bristol County.

The Health Department is ordering all the suburban water suppliers to retest their water right away. But it doesn't expect problems because most of them use newer pipes.

The supply board knows there are no lead problems in water leaving its reservoirs, so it suspects the lead is being picked up in old service pipes, or even in a house's plumbng.

The supply board says most homes built after World War II have copper pipes. It says about 92 percent of its lead service lines were installed before 1930. Lead pipes coming into a house are dull gray and can be easily scratched with a key.

The supply board yesterday also advised customers:

For questions, call (401) 521-5070.

If you want to know the lead levels of your water, the supply board intends to have sampling bottles available next week that homeowners can pick up. It will charge a $15 fee.

More information may be obtained by going to www.provwater.com.

June Swallow, chief of the Office of Drinking Water Quality at the state Department of Health, said the education program is mandated by federal rules once more than 10 percent of the water samples came back with levels of lead higher than 15 parts per billion.

"This is a preventative measure," Swallow said. But she added that in responding to thousands of cases of childhood lead poisoning in Rhode Island, the Health Department has yet to find a case solely attributable to drinking water.

"Lead in water can contribute to the problem," she said. "But the main sources are almost always lead in paints or dust."

This isn't the first time a Rhode Island water system has exceeded the lead limits, Swallow said. Woonsocket, Westerly and Portsmouth all had problems, she said, but they were brief. The Providence system, however, serves more than half the state, so any problem there is important.

Rhode Island was once considered the lead poisoning capital of the country because it had such high levels of childhood lead poisoning. Poisoning rates have plummeted in recent years.

But the presence of lead in drinking water is a sensitive subject, particularly after stories in the Washington Post in 2004 that officials in Washington, D.C., found high levels there and failed to tell their customers. Rhode Island was also briefly mentioned in the series for allegedly exceeding safe lead levels in 2002 and not informing the public.

Swallow says Providence did not exceed safe lead levels then, but it did monitor during the wrong periods. As a result the Health Department ordered the utility to conduct a smaller lead-education program and to monitor annually, instead of every three years.

David A. Nickerson, spokesman for the supply board, said the controversy in Washington was important as Providence officials decided how to react to the latest problems.

"We decided we better get this out as fast as possible," Nickerson said.

Pamela M. Marchand, the general manager and chief engineer of the supply board, said regulations give the utility up to 60 days to implement the education program. But it decided to proceed almost immediately after the higher numbers became clear during the last few days.

"There is a risk. It is a concern," she said in a news conference yesterday morning. "But there is an easy way to take care of it and that is by flushing your pipes."

Because of the city's old pipes, the same protocol has long been advocated by educators with the Childhood Lead Action Project, the group that provides support and advocacy for the families of lead poisoned children in Rhode Island.

"We've been recommending the same thing for years," said Liz Colon, director of training and outreach at CLAP. "Always run the cold water for 30 seconds to a minute and a half."

The water supply board has also made similar recommendations, but not as part of a major education campaign.

Marchand said the exceedance was based on a relatively small sample of 100 homes. At 16 houses, lead levels were elevated.

The supply board is not certain of the cause. It offered two explanations.

To reduce the amounts of lead dissolving from pipes into drinking water, the board has been gradually reducing the pH, or acidity, of the water from a level of 10 to 9.7. That seems like a minor amount, Marchand said, "but things can get tricky" when changing water chemistry.

Also, the 100 homes sampled are not the same as the 100 sampled last year, because of homeowner turnover and other reasons and that can make it difficult to compare the results.

The public-education campaign includes information on the utility's Web site, www.provwater.com, pamphlets that will be mailed to customers and broadcasted public service announcements.

Meanwhile, the supply board hopes to reduce lead levels by continuing to adjust the chemistry of its water.

plord@projo.com / (401) 277-8036