the mayor was trying to say the water source from the reservoir was not contaminated. that was true. but what was coming out of their faucets, there was a significant amount where the water was not safe to drink. you know, dr. torres, when you read nick s story and you think about how big this country is and how common political dysfunction is, and you have all these inter mingling of agencies at different levels of government, we ve seen it in flint, we ve seen it in newark. are we likely to see this in other places? steve, i think we are because the infrastructure in this country has aged. it has a hard problem of trying to get that up to date and modernized. like you said, 1986 is when the standard came out saying anything after 1986 you cannot have lead pipes in the house. what the epa says, houses built before 1986 more than likely has lead pipes or lead solder to join the pipes together that could be leaching lead. those are houses that need to be tested. different sources ar
rendered the sodium silicate ineffective. they never did a test before doing that. the state was unaware they were doing this. city officials couldn t produce any tests that showed when they were looking to change the acidity, they wondered what other impact it might have on the water. that s what started snowballing the effect from our report that brought us to 2017 when the first lead level exceedence first came to newark. that came to june, july of 2017, and the mayor was basically, his entire message was the water is completely safe to drink. don t worry here. there were legal things the city had to do, testing, mail anyone whose house turned to positive tests. those are random samples you don t extrapolate from. 18 months the entire message from the city was these are outrageously false statements coming in about our water and the water is absolutely safe to drink. when you were in one of those 1400, 1500 households getting elevated lead levels of the water from the lead leaching
mayor, given what you ve told us, given what you ve reported, what s his standing in newark right now? he s an incredibly popular mayor. up until this moment there hasn t really been much of a controversy, much of a scandal. he took over from cory booker who was popular. as he left there were a few issues due to rising crime, budget cuts. up until now the mayor has been very popular. he s a very important ally of governor phil murphy. he s well liked in the state. which is what surprised so many people to see how his messaging and handling of this issue has been cost traft to how we ve seen him run the city so far. it is a depressing stories in some way, fascinating story as well. very well reported by you and your colleagues. appreciate that, nick. dr. john torres. thank you for being with us tonight. that is our broadcast for this monday night. thank you at home for being with us, and good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york.
that same issue. think they would be there. and pete buttigieg if he trump also reiterated the wants to stay in a tier that s false allegation that president obama pushed russia out of what appreciable polling. was then the g8 because he was but overall, the point about embarrassed when russia innecksed crimea from ukraine, voters under 50 is true that which was the official reason for russia s suspension from the overall, they are more g8 in 2014. fox news had this fact check. progressive minded, seem to be president trump says the russians were removed because centering policy more than older voters and that makes sense putin was outsmarted by obama. because of everything we knew about millennials from the 2016 campaign. it s interesting to me, the biden campaign really has show the screen shot for one the reason, putin invaded and second, the head-to-head polling he has in his first ad. i mine, they re really leaning annexed crimea. into this argument, like the biden mes
kind of mistake. this is the kind of thing where the biden campaign will respond to say we make too much of an issue out of this, there are other candidates making mistakes on the campaign, but we re just trying to play into this issue. that s why this is a matter of making that electability case, that supposes you to these kinds of issues. the candidate who can most disqualify joe biden likely is joe biden himself. mike nemly, and natasha thank you for being with us. today s breaking news developments in the water crisis. how the city intends to bring safe drinking water sooner than anticipated. we re back after this.