Ariz. AG Investigating Lead-Covered Telecom Cables for Public Health Risks

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) is investigating lead-covered cables that may be present in Arizona, a response to recent reports identifying them as a potential environmental and public health risk, her office said Wednesday.

The inquiry on lead-covered cables “is a critical step in assessing and mitigating any potential environmental or public health-risks to our communities,” said Mayes, who sent 200 letters to telecom operators, including Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink, requesting information on any such cables they own. “I expect full cooperation from telecom companies as we work to protect Arizonans from any risks associated with the presence of lead-cables in our state,” she said. She asked telecom operators to respond within 30 days with details about the cables they own.

Lead levels in such cables reportedly exceed the EPA’s safety standards for drinking water and soil, said Mayes, whose office is collecting data on the type, location and length of these cables, and whether they are aerial, underground or underwater.

Mayes said her office already identified a lead-covered cable traversing the Colorado River from Nevada into Arizona’s Mohave County. In a Nov. 20 letter to AT&T, which she released Wednesday, Mayes requested specific information on the cable, which Bell Telephone placed in 1949, she said.

Mayes requested a full inventory of lead-covered cables located in Arizona that AT&T Nevada or its predecessors used to provide telecom services. She asked for information on the type of cables, whether fiber or copper, where they're located and whether they're aerial, underground or underwater. She also wants to know whether the cables are still in active use, plus any other information that could be used to physically locate and inspect them.

Mayes said lead-covered cables have been found “overhead, under state and federally regulated waterbodies, and in underground conduits.” The cables may pose a public health and environmental risk as lead is released into the surrounding environment, she said. She referenced news reports saying environmental sampling found lead levels “many hundreds of times in excess” of what the EPA considers safe for drinking water and soil. An AT&T spokesperson referred us to US Telecom Wednesday, saying lead-clad cables are not unique to AT&T. "This is an industry issue so the industry organization should respond."

AT&T is defendant in a 2021 lawsuit (docket 2:21-cv-00073) brought by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, alleging its inoperative cables at the bottom of Lake Tahoe are likely leaching lead into the water. The alliance seeks an order enjoining AT&T from “further and continuing disposal” of the cables and from “further and continuing release of lead” from the cables into the waters of Lake Tahoe. It also seeks an order requiring AT&T to pay civil penalties of $2,500 per day beginning one year before the filing of the complaint and continuing until AT&T "no longer causes lead to be released" into the lake.

AT&T said last month the cables hadn’t been in operation for years and that at least one end of one cable had been cut (see 2310270036). It said the cables were installed and maintained “in conformity with applicable law” at the time. Though it denied the existence of “any discharge,” AT&T said any discharge of lead from the cables wouldn’t cause “any significant amount of lead to be released into any source of drinking water within the meaning of [California’s] Proposition 65.”