Pulte makes an unwanted admission about our water supply line

[NOTE: PULTE SUBSEQUENTLY ADVISED THE COMMUNITY THAT THEY MADE A MISTAKE IN NAMING THE PIPE--IT WAS NOT ACTUALLY POLYBUTYLENE PIPE BUT WAS INSTEAD WAS POLYETHLENE PIPE.]

While Sun City homeowners, including the parrot Poly, may wish to munch on a cracker, what Poly and our homeowners do not want is another potential plumbing matter to fret over.

Sadly, though, that is exactly what Pulte may have offered us in their most recent response on the KITEC matter. If you listen carefully, or have a good imagination, you just might hear our most colorful Poly telling us to stay away from something called “black poly.”  In his high pitched squeal, Poly could be heard repeating “Black poly no good, black poly no good.”

Our parrot Poly doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about, or does he?

What our parrot named Poly was talking about was “black poly,” or as more commonly known in the world of plastic piping, Polybutylene, or PB for short. When it came time to bring the City’s water supply from the curb to our homes, Pulte, then Del Webb, apparently decided to use Polybutylene piping. Why is unclear. For all we know, PB was also used in all underground water lines, but that's not clear either.

This revelation was just recently brought to our attention when Pulte revised their response to Question 40 on where Kitec started. Here is what Pulte wrote, in part:

“. . . . Pulte/Del Webb employees observed polybutylene piping ("black poly") as the piping used to deliver water directly into the home.” [To read the full text.]

              
          What Pulte is telling us is that they had used this “black poly” piping to carry water from the street to the home, at least in part since they had also used KITEC piping. The extent of such use in the Community is not known.

Pulte’s admission was striking given the incredible checkered history of “black poly,” or Polybutylene piping. Here is the introduction to a chapter on PB litigation from a Rand Corporation monograph on BP’s checkered past.

 
“Beginning in the late 1970s, polybutylene plastic plumbing systems—touted as being cheaper and more durable than copper pipe systems—were installed in new homes nationwide, particularly in the sunbelt states, which were experiencing a housing boom. Over the years, several million homes, many of them mobile homes, were built with polybutylene plumbing systems. Before long, the plumbing systems began to experience failures of the fittings and of the pipe itself. Consumers nationwide attributed the failures to various causes, including inadequate design, defective manufacturing, improper installation, and degradation of the materials from chemicals in the drinking water."   [To read that very interesting Rand report on our site, click Rand, and this is also at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR969/MR969.ch14.pdf]

Some Arizona building codes had prohibited the use of plastic pipe for water supply lines in residential construction, mandating the use of copper after the PB problem surfaced. Even as far back as 1994, “Several Arizona municipalities have become sufficiently wary of PB to ban its use in new construction. Glendale and Goodyear left PB out of their new 1994 plumbing codes, and Chandler has banned the piping.”  http://ag.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/nov94/leaks.html  That industry warning, at least in Sun City's heartland, Arizona, was back in 1994 and the first homes being built in Sun City were occupied beginning in 1999.

But the first industry-wide warning about PB came almost 20 years ago in 1987 with the first major lawsuit for property damage allegedly caused by defective PB systems. That lawsuit alleged that E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (Dupont), along with Shell Chemical Company (Shell), Hoechst-Celanese Corporation (Celanese), and other entities, was liable for damages because PB systems, including their acetal fittings, were inherently defective and caused property damage and loss of use of property.

In the mid-1990's Dupont, Shell and Celanese entered into negotiations with
various claimants' counsel for a national class action settlement of all PB claims. In 1995 Dupont reached such a class action settlement in the amount of a fund of $120 million in an Alabama class action lawsuit captioned Garria Spencer v. Shell Oil Co.3 (“Spencer").

Shortly after the Spencer settlement, Shell and Celanese entered into another
national class action settlement in a Tennessee case captioned Cox v. Shell Oil Co.4
("Cox"). Under the Cox settlement, which was approved by the court in 1995, Shell
and Celanese agreed to pay for the replacement of PB systems of homeowners who
qualified for relief. Shell and Celanese committed a total of $950 million to fund this
settlement.

Following the Spencer and Cox national class action settlements, Dupont, Shell
and Celanese entered into an agreement, dated November 17, 1995 under which they agreed to settle the claims asserted against each other relating to their past costs, and they agreed on funding and payment mechanisms for the national class action settlements on a going-forward basis. [These several paragraphs were excerpted from a 2006 court document involving Dupont and an insurance carrier disputing liability in this matter. Dupont Case.]

With over a billion dollars in settlement monies on the table by 1995, some may find it strange that Del Webb/Pulte would be using PB in any form by 1999 or later.

While PB piping was deemed unsuitable for household use, it's conceivable that builders were convinced of PB’s safe and effective use as a water supply line to the home. In other words, builders, such as Del Webb/Pulte, that had used PB as water supply lines were presumably reasonably convinced that the pipe will not exhibit the same leaking properties that resulted in a billion dollar settlement.

I find that reasoning a little troubling. "But why not," I ask? Why wont PB fail just as it had in the past? The only difference is that now it's burried in the ground. Some have alleged that ultimate failure of PB pipe is only a matter of time, not a question of whether. Perhaps those that make that claim are overly pessimistic, or wrong. I've read that signs of PB pipe failure is in the 10-15 year range. But we are told that one should not believe everything they read on the internet. But if what's been widely reported happens to be true, is that eventuality a realistic expectation for Sun City?

Although the pipe fittings used in a PB system received the brunt of the blame in pipe failures, the pipe itself was not immune as a potential cause of a leaking system. Both were made from the same plastic resin used in the manufacturer of Polybutylene plastic. Some believe that this plastic deteriorates when it comes into contact with oxidants normally found in public water supplies, such as chlorine, causing the pipe to scale and flake from the inside and become brittle.

If available information indicates that the public water supplies is a potential source of PB pipe deterioration, are we then to understand that eventually our PB pipe will also fail?

Ron Johnson, 29 January 2007