Upcoming lead pipe survey by city

BONNERS FERRY — The city will be conducting a lead pipe survey of its infrastructure by Oct. 16, 2024, due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s next step for lead and copper rule.

EPA officials said there is no safe level of lead exposure. When it comes to drinking water, the primary source of lead is from pipes, which can present a risk to the health of children and adults.

December 2021, the EPA announced the next steps to strengthen the regulatory framework on lead in drinking water. Following the agency’s review of the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions under President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 13990, the EPA has concluded that there are significant opportunities to improve the rule to support proactively removing lead service lines and “more equitably protecting public health.”

With the update to the EPA’s lead and copper rule, all community water systems are required to remove lead pipes.

Mike Klaus, city engineer, said the city will need to look at each water service line and see what they are made of. He added that the responsibility doesn’t stop at the meter, but that the lines in homes have to be checked for lead and copper as well.

Klaus said from the water department’s knowledge there are no lead service lines, but said there may be plumbing fixtures in homes that have lead in them.

“Most of our problems, I would estimate, are internal to the homes and not the service lines,” he said.

However, officials said that doesn’t change the fact that the city has to do the pipe survey by the deadline. Klaus said the Department of Environmental Quality recently created guidance on how the city and other jurisdictions can move forward, along with future seminars and training.

Klaus added that DEQ and the city will be looking at service lines to local schools and day cares first due to the younger population being more vulnerable. He said there will be a timeline for replacement for homeowners and the city to remove copper and lead.

Klaus clarified that the issue is not in the source water, but lead and copper housing fixtures.

The city does not have detailed records on service lines, so there will be a “significant effort” by the water department to look into lines, Klaus said. There should be a final guidance by DEQ by the end of the year.

Klaus estimated that the city of Bonners Ferry has an estimated 1,300-1,400 service lines. The city’s water department is working on a strategy in order to complete this task.