FAITH — The town of Faith sent out notices of lead being found in the water beginning Tuesday after lead was found in the water from a few of the homes using the town’s water system.

The notices are required by state organizations to be delivered to residents of the town anytime lead is found in any water after routine testing. That testing is completed every three years, according to Town Clerk Karen Fink. Now that elevated levels of lead have been found, Fink said that they will have to test those homes every three months.

Both Fink and Faith Utilities Director Scott Gardner reassured the board of aldermen during their meeting on Tuesday that any lead found in the water was most likely coming from fixtures inside the homes themselves and not from Faith’s water system.

“This water system is new enough, I know it’s 1968 but we used no copper piping in the ground, we use other sources. We have no lead service lines. This system was laid out all at one time initially and then from that point forward, any improvements or additions that were made were done with PVC piping and the same brass fittings. We have no lead in this water system,” said Gardner.

The homes required to be tested are 10 homes that were considered most likely to contain lead in the water due to factors such as the age of the building. When those homes were tested for the period between Aug. 1 and Sept. 30 some of them showed lead levels over the limit of 0.015 milligrams per liter.

Fink also told the board the extra testing will come at the expense of the state government, not the town. Anybody outside of the required homes who wishes to test for lead will have to do so at the cost of their own money and time.

Fink and Gardner also provided an update on the progress the town has made in getting the new well online. The town is still working with the North Carolina Department of Water Resources to find a compromise to the issue of pumping the wells simultaneously. The town and state were still in a holding pattern, but Mayor Randall Barger said that he was going to talk to members of the state legislature to see if they could help find an avenue forward.