The City of Boulder is hurrying to complete a required inventory of lead water service lines in homes and other buildings.
This week, city property owners will be mailed a survey that asks them to inspect and report the material used in the lines that carry water from main pipes into their structures. The City will follow up with door-to-door visits to those who don’t respond, said City Administrator Brian Bullock.
The state Commerce Department announced the inventory in June, 2023. Water systems that complete the survey by Oct. 16, 2024, it said, would be eligible to apply for funding to remove and replace lead lines, from a total of $100 million in federal money available to Montana.
Bullock said the survey was “something that fell through the cracks” for the City. “I realized we had no progress done, so started working on it in last month.” He said the city could be fined if it doesn’t demonstrate progress on its inventory.
The inventory has its origins in the America’s Water Infrastructure Act, which was passed in 2018 in the wake of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which exposed thousands of residents to dangerous levels of lead. The legislation required the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to evaluate and include the cost of replacing led service lines in its quadrennial surveys of drinking water infrastructure.
The agency’s 2021 survey of 3629 public water systems across the U.S. was the first to include questions about the materials used in service lines. That survey, which included mostly larger and medium-sized systems, was used to produce a preliminary estimate of the total number of lead service lines in use — providing the basis for distribution this year of funds to states from the Safe Water Drinking Act to support the replacement of lead lines.
The 2021 drinking water survey identified 3,791 lead service lines in Montana. Based on that partial result, the EPA estimated there are a total of 14,125 lead lines in the state. The current survey of all public systems will be used to refine that estimate.
The Boulder survey will ask building owners to locate and examine the pipe that connects to their water shut-off valve. Lead pipes are a shiny silver in color, when scratched, and are not magnetic. Steel pipes are dark gray and magnetic; copper pipes are brown or copper-colored.
Residents can return the survey by mail, or report the results to Susan Fenhaus of Morrison Maerle, the consulting firm assisting the City, at (406) 495-3432 or sfenhaus@m-m.net.
