Rural water surveying customers for pipe material

Southern Iowa Rural Water Association customers are being asked to explain the history and materials used for water main on their property - if they even know what it is made of.

The survey is based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to have all public water utility lead pipe replaced in the next 10 years. The announcement was made last month.

SIRWA has notified its customers via letter and on its website. It is “working to identify customer owned service lines materials throughout the water system and has determined that the water pipe (called a service line) that connects your home or building to the water main is made from unknown material but may be lead. Because your service line material is unknown, there is the potential that some or all of the service line could be made of lead or galvanized pipe that was previously connected to lead. People living in homes with a lead or galvanized pipe previously connected to a lead service line have an increased risk of exposure to lead from their drinking water.”

To assist SIRWA to determine service line material, contact SIRWA at its Creston office by phone at (641) 782-5744 or email to mgmtstaff@sirwa.org. The website is sirwa.org.

SIRWA Co-Manager Jeff Rice said there are no lead pipes in SIRWA’s distribution system and expects to take years to determine information about all of its customers. According to SIRWA’s annual meeting earlier this year, as of 2023, the association has 9,530 rural customers; 2,217 city customers; seven bulk customers and 1,376 wastewater customers. Customers are in all of Adams, Clarke, Decatur, Ringgold, Taylor and Union along and portions of Adair, Cass, Lucas, Madison, Montgomery, Page and Warren counties.

Of the water supply, 85% of it is produced at SIRWA’s plant east of Creston using Three Mile Lake. The remaining amount of water for its customers is from Greenfield, Leon, Corning and Osceola.

Creston Water Works notified its customers last month. Creston has a record of where lead pipes are in its service area.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Milwaukee is one of many cities across the country taking steps to remove lead pipes from their drinking water. Officials are using money from the federal infrastructure law to accelerate lead-pipe replacement work and meet a goal to remove all lead pipes within 10 years, down from an initial 60-year timeframe.

The EPA rule is the strongest overhaul of lead-in-water standards in roughly three decades. Lead, a heavy metal used in pipes, paints, ammunition and many other products, is a neurotoxin that can cause a range of disorders from behavioral problems to brain damage. Lead lowers IQ scores in children, stunts their development and increases blood pressure in adults.

The EPA estimates the stricter standard will prevent up to 900,000 infants from having low birth weight and avoid up to 1,500 premature deaths a year from heart disease.

The new regulation is stricter than one proposed last fall and requires water systems to ensure that lead concentrations do not exceed an “action level” of 10 parts per billion, down from 15 parts per billion under the current standard. If high lead levels are found, water systems must inform the public about ways to protect their health, including the use of water filters, and take action to reduce lead exposure while concurrently working to replace all lead pipes.

Lead pipes often impact low-income urban areas the most. They are most commonly found in older, industrial parts of the country, including major cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit and Milwaukee. The rule also revises the way lead amounts are measured, which could significantly expand the number of cities and water systems that are found to have excessive levels of lead, the EPA said.

Lead water pipes have been out of production since 1986.

To help communities comply, the agency is making available an additional $2.6 billion for drinking water infrastructure through the bipartisan infrastructure law. The agency also is awarding $35 million in competitive grants for programs to reduce lead in drinking water.

The 10-year timeframe won’t start for three years, giving water utilities time to prepare. A limited number of cities with large volumes of lead pipes may be given a longer timeframe to meet the new standard.

Lead pipes can corrode and contaminate drinking water; removing them sharply reduces the chance of a crisis. In Flint, Michigan, a change in the source of the city’s drinking water source more than a decade ago made it more corrosive, spiking lead levels in tap water.

Another hurdle is finding the lead pipes. Initial pipe inventories were due in October and many cities have said they don’t know what substances their pipes are made of. Without knowing their location, it is hard to efficiently replace them, according to Eric Schwartz, co-founder of BlueConduit, a company formed in response to the Flint crisis that helps cities find their lead pipes.

Associated Press contributed to this story.