Waco Water Utilities Services recently finished assessing more than 50,000 service lines and found 139 lead pipes in the city's water system, a commitment required by a revised Environmental Protection Agency rule to limit lead and copper in drinking water, Waco's Water Utility Services.
Utilities spokeswoman Jessica Emmett Sellers said the department is working to replace lead service lines before the end of the summer.
“By the end of the summer, our goal is to have replaced every lead service line we've found,” he said. “Of more than 50,000 meters, as 50,600 is approximately the number, we found 139, so not much. Some have already been replaced and the rest are scheduled to be replaced.”
According to the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lead is a toxic metal that can be harmful to human health even at low levels of exposure. Adults exposed to lead can experience increased blood pressure, hypertension, decreased kidney function, and reproductive problems.
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The use of lead pipes in public and private water systems was banned in 1986. The Environmental Protection Agency implemented a rule in 1991 to limit lead and copper in drinking water and announced revisions to the rule last year to better protect the public from lead contaminants. drinking water
Water suppliers are now required to develop and maintain an inventory of all service lines. The inventory should include documentation of the service line materials, whether leaded, unleaded, unknown status, or galvanized requiring replacement, and the location of the lead lines. Water suppliers must complete their inventory and share their results with the public by October 16. Water suppliers must then replace all lead service lines within 10 years.
The revised rule also reduces the amount of lead allowed in drinking water from 15 micrograms per liter to 10 micrograms per liter. Water suppliers are now required to sample tap water in locations with known lead lines.
Since March of last year, employees of the water service have traveled throughout the city to open all the water meters in the system, vacuum the waste and determine the material of the pipes. Sellers said documentation for pipe materials and the location of lead pipes is currently being compiled. That database will be released to the public before the October deadline and will be available on the utility's website, Sellers said.
A city team has been working for the past year to inventory the service lines that connect to all of Waco's more than 50,000 water meters. The 139 lead service lines that are in the process are due to be replaced by the end of the summer.
Rod Aydelotte, Tribune-Herald file photo
“They went out and looked and took pictures of every service line, so there was a huge amount of manpower that went into it, which is pretty impressive,” he said. “The next steps will be to compile that data, organize it and put it into this searchable database.”
Of the 139 lead pipes found, Sellers said only one pipe was owned by a customer and not the city. Service lines leading to a customer's meter are owned by the city, while lines from the meter to the customer's faucets are owned by the property owner. The utility department will be responsible for replacing all lead lines owned by Waco.
During a city council meeting in June, Water Service Director Lisa Tyer said it would cost the city about $6,000 to replace the service line. That means an effort to replace 138 pipes would cost about $830,000.
NOW WATCH: Waco officials at June 19, 2023 city council meeting discuss citywide check of remaining lead water lines citywide and effort to create inventory of service lines.
Earlier this year, Waco applied for $20 million in loan funding from the Texas Water Development Board's Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. Sellers said the Texas Water Development Board will notify Waco of the results of the application in November or December.
If Waco is awarded funds, Sellers said the utilities department will use the money to address pipes that have been flagged as “galvanized requiring replacement” in the inventory database. Galvanized pipes are made of iron or steel and dipped in a protective coating of zinc to prevent corrosion and rust. However, galvanized pipes can corrode and trap lead particles in the corroded sections. Accumulation of lead particles in galvanized pipes, usually found in galvanized pipes that have at some point been downstream of a lead pipe, can contaminate drinking water just as lead pipes do.
“The next step is to look at galvanized lines,” Sellers said. “The loan we applied for is for the replacement of these because there are more than there are lead lines left in the system.”
As part of the federal agency's revised rule, all child care centers and schools through eighth grade must be tested for lead and copper after the October deadline. At June's city council meeting, Tyer said his department is ready to test the 84 child care facilities and 40 schools in Waco that serve students through eighth grade.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, young children, infants and fetuses are especially vulnerable to lead. Low levels of lead exposure in children have been linked to central and peripheral nervous system damage, learning disabilities, shorter stature, hearing impairment, as well as alterations in the formation and function of blood cells .
The standard requires that 20% of installations be tested each year. Tyer said all schools and child care centers in the Waco area will be tested in the first year and then each facility will be tested once every five years.
