VERNON TOWNSHIP — With approximately 5,250 customer service lines checked, Meadville Area Water Authority (MAWA) is down to its last 50 or so residences in its hunt for possible lead pipes, Project Manager Bob Harrington told board members Wednesday.
No lead lines have been found so far, he said, and more direct motivation may be needed to complete the inventory.
“We’re going to send some letters out. Unfortunately I think we’ve gotten to the point now where probably some type of financial penalty is probably what’s going to get the last 51 addresses’ attention,” Harrington said during the authority’s monthly meeting. “We’ve done all the pleas, we’ve done all the ‘would you’ and we did the meme.”
The lead line inventory was mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the aftermath of extensive lead contamination in water supply lines in Flint, Michigan, that resulted in residents being advised not to drink their tap water in 2016. The EPA emergency order issued that year, which required a variety of corrective actions by both the city of Flint and the state of Michigan, was lifted in May.
MAWA submitted results from its customer survey last October.
The three-question survey was relatively simple. Customers were first asked to check whether the supply line carrying water from the curbside shutoff valve is lead, galvanized steel, copper, plastic or some other material. The second question asked each homeowner to check one of several options explaining how they determined the supply line material, and the last question asked them to select a time range for the residence’s construction.
The survey is still available and can be completed online at 120water.formstack.com/forms/mawa. In May, board members voted unanimously to pay $8,000 to renew the authority’s lead line inventory contract with 120Water of Zionsville, Indiana.
For those who are unsure of the composition of their supply lines, MAWA staff members are available by appointment to look at the supply line, or customers can take a photo of their line and email it to the authority at support@120water.com.
“Literally all I’ve got to do is take a picture of the incoming line?” Chairman Tim Groves asked of the process facing the final 51 customers.
“That’s all I need,” Harrington responded.
The time spent by MAWA staff members trying to get customers to comply over the course of approximately 18 months far outmeasures the “two minutes’ worth of work” it takes to photograph the water line, Harrington added.
“You can go downstairs and snap a picture faster than you can call here to tell me you don’t want to do it,” he joked.
Harrington also reported that MAWA repaired four water main break last month: a 6-inch main on Walker Drive, an 8-inch main on Morgan Street, a 12-inch main on South Main Street, and an 8-inch main on Allegheny Street that resulted in a boil water advisory for about 1,500 customers that lasted about three days.
In response to questioning from Groves, Harrington said that while the breaks all occurred on large-diameter lines, they were not related nor did they result from a particular cause.
“The breaks that we had just happened to be in bad spots,” he said. “Every now and then we’ll get them where they can just beat us up. We just happened to have a couple of them.”
There can also be a snowball effect when breaks occur in those “bad spots,” according to Harrington.
“Sometimes in these situations, breaks can cause breaks,” he said. “When we change the pressure in the system because of a break, like we had on Allegheny, that can stick around and haunt us for a couple of weeks while everything finds its position again.”