Officials at Bally’s Atlantic City casino failed to notify guests of testing that showed high lead levels in some drinking water at the casino hotel.
The casino was notified of the high lead reading in September, but didn’t act to alert guests or close the areas in question until March 4.
The New York Post reported that the testing showed a high roller suite on the top floor of the 49-story hotel had lead levels of 17.8 micrograms per liter, according to tests taken last Aug. 27 by an independent lab and submitted to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The safe level is 15 micrograms per liter.
Seven of 20 water samples taken last summer at the casino hotel had elevated lead levels, the test results show. No warnings were posted at any of the locations with tainted water, according to the Post.
A casino spokesman later told the Press of Atlantic City that the results were due to testing errors and that the casino’s self-contained water system has never had a problem with high lead levels. Still, the spokesman said the casino—owned by Caesars Entertainment—erred in not acting on the initial results and by not notifying guests.
According to the initial report by the Post, elevated lead levels were also found in the water at two bar sinks at the Blue Martini Bar, at the casino’s nurse’s station, in a janitor’s closet (which had the highest levels, 1,300 micrograms per liter) and in fourth-floor and eighth-floor women’s restrooms, the results show.
The testing is required for Bally’s since it has its own water system, as opposed to using water from the city’s Municipal Utilities Authority. Results are monitored by the DEP.
However, the DEP also waited until February to instruct the casino to move to correct the problem through a “non-compliant” letter sent February 26, the Post reported.
Bally’s then retested the water and found no high lead readings. A spokesman for the casino told the paper that the second set of safe readings indicates an error in the initial readings.
“We should have acted then to shut down the sources and retest immediately, and we take full responsibility for that error,” Caesar spokesperson Katie Dougherty told the Press of Atlantic City in an e-mail. “However, immediate retesting was critical because it’s highly unusual in our case to have only 7 of 20 sources test out this way because there are no lead pipes in the building, there’s only one source of water, and 10 prior years of water test results showed no lead issue.
“When we focused properly on this issue at the end of February, we did shut down the seven locations and conducted two sets of retests,” Dougherty said. “Both tests yielded the same result, all 20 locations showed either extremely low or undetectable levels of lead. We believe it is reasonable to conclude that the initial testing protocol was flawed or the samples had been corrupted by accident, and we have reopened all 7 locations as a result of the retest results.”
