Why you received an ominous Brita filter in the mail from Denver Water
The short answer is the utility is trying to get the lead out. Here is the medium-sized answer.
Getting a Brita water filter sent to your home by the local water utility to sift out lead is probably not the best feeling. You might live in one of over 100,000 households around the city that Denver Water sent them to as part of its lead reduction program, which is meant to do exactly what it sounds like.
The much heavier lift by Denver Water includes replacing tons of lead pipes around the city with copper ones to reduce the chances of drinking water with lead in it. The massive undertaking will take 15 years.
Judging by the number of questions we’ve gotten about the lead reduction program, these things sound scary to some of you! Hopefully, this guide to what’s going on with the city’s drinking water and how Denver Water is trying to improve things is helpful. These answers were compiled from interviews with Denver Water spokesperson Jose Salas and Bruce Lanphear, a professor who specializes in environmental neurotoxins at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
It might.
To know for sure, you can request a free lead test from Denver Water. You can also plug your address into this map to see if the utility has confirmed or suspects that you have a lead service line.
