Ted Thao didn’t know the house he owned in St. Paul had a mains connection before the water company called him, but the discovery brought good news: the line would be replaced at no cost to him.
Thao’s home is home to a licensed daycare, which put it on the priority list of the St. Paul Regional Water Services (SPRWS) main exchange program. The new copper line installed this week could be a selling point for customers, Thao said, because “so everything is new.” [there’s] Don’t worry about water.”
Thao is just one of 100,000 water customers statewide who had leading water lines, according to estimates by the Minnesota Department of Health and Human Services in 2019. Now, $240 million in new state funding will help communities replace those toxic pipes over the next decade, as St. Paul began doing last year. Another $215 million from the Federal Law on Infrastructure, Investments and Jobs will support state funds over the next five years.
The massive clean-up effort is due to the fact that investigations are increasingly showing that no lead consumption is safe. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the heavy metal is particularly harmful to growing children because it damages the brain and nervous system and causes developmental problems.
It is the property owner’s responsibility to maintain or replace the service lines that connect a home to the utility water line. According to Annika Bankston, director of water treatment and distribution for the city of Minneapolis, the cost of a replacement often runs to $8,000.
It will be some time before public funds for pipe replacements reach homeowners — the state has to set up a grant process to award the grants, and many cities are still catching up by conducting research into which homes are over have lead pipes and which do not.
The new funding will also significantly increase the need for skilled workers who can replace pipes. The St. Paul water utility has hired 40 workers to work on replacing the lead lines, general manager Patrick Shea said.
The utility was able to add new employees with relative ease this year, but “the amount of work that needs to be done in Minnesota is significant,” Shea said.
“We’re going to need some bigger construction companies working with the utilities to get this done,” he added.
find track
All water utilities must meet a federal deadline for mapping their lines in October 2024. Some, like Minneapolis, are ahead of schedule — the city worked in the 2010s to digitize the paper flashcards that recorded every time a home or business connected to the system, Bankston said. The city has an estimated 47,000 service lines.
Other communities are still in the process of completing their survey. Duluth has screened about a third of the city’s customers so far, said Cyndi Falconer, who coordinates the lead removal program. She estimated that there are 9,000 lead lines in Duluth.
The task is even more difficult in smaller communities, said Elizabeth Wefel, a senior lobbyist for the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities.
“Among our members, there are many cities that are 150 years or older and may not have ownership records that far back,” Wefel said.
Tom Hogan, director of the Department of Environmental Health at MDH, said the agency will work with communities to help take stock. The state will spend $24 million, or 10% of the fund, to find and map the lead pipes.
Homeowners who want to find out for themselves should first check with the utility company to see if they already have a map. SPRWS has a website listing them by address, and Minneapolis is working on a similar map that will be ready in June, Bankston said.
In the meantime, Minneapolis residents can call 612-673-5600 to ask for their address. Duluth notifies homeowners every year that they have lead pipes in the mail if they are found on a property, Falconer said. Water customers can also call 218-730-5200.
If the pipe leading to a home’s water meter is exposed, homeowners can also perform a scratch test — a soft, easy-to-scratch pipe that turns a shiny silver color is made of lead.
Waiting for replacement
Only cities or utilities can apply for the new state funding, so homeowners with lead plumbing will have to wait for their local replacement program to reach them.
Water company directors said they are trying to complete projects in parallel with road works so that a road does not have to be dug up multiple times. Communities are also attempting to complete work first in places with lower incomes and higher proportions of young children. The MDH will provide data on where children have the highest blood lead levels to help decide which projects come first, Hogan said.
Just because a home has a leaded supply line doesn’t mean there is lead in the water — utility companies treat the water to reduce the risk of corrosion by changing the pH of the drinking water and using an additive that breaks the inside of the Coated pipes.
Once a homeowner finds out they have a lead pipe, both SPRWS and Minneapolis offer free home tests to determine how much lead there may be in the water.
Duluth does not offer home testing, but will provide lead-filtering jugs free of charge to customers with known or suspected lead lines.
The best solution is to completely remove the lead.
At Thao’s St. Paul home, workers had to dig down to the old pipe next to his sidewalk, pull out the old pipe, run new copper pipe into his basement, and then connect it to the main pipe across the street.
Five hours after the start of the work, he was able to turn on the tap.
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https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-is-spending-240-million-to-get-the-lead-out-of-your-plumbing/600278501/