Latest Wisconsin data on water service lines provides important insights, reveals over 150,000 lead pipes

See the EDF blog. 

Note to readers: As we all grapple with the grave global health challenge from COVID-19, we want to acknowledge the essential service that the public health professionals at water utilities provide in delivering safe water not only for drinking but for washing our hands and our surroundings. In the meantime, we are continuing to work towards improved health and environmental protections – including reducing lead in drinking water. We’ll plan to keep sharing developments regarding lead in drinking water that may be useful to you. In the meantime, please stay safe and healthy.

With the comment period now closed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed revisions to its Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), agency staff are busy reviewing the 687 distinct comments submitted to the docket with a goal of finalizing the rule by the end of the year. To help water professionals plan ahead, the cover article in the March edition of Journal AWWA walks readers through the proposal and its implications. It ends with six suggestions to water systems that include developing a service line material inventory and identifying funding strategies to accelerate full lead service line (LSL) replacement.

With this suggestion in mind, we are continuing our work evaluating state efforts to develop LSL inventories by taking a closer look at reporting by Wisconsin municipal and private water utilities[1] to the state Public Service Commission (PSC) for calendar year 2018.[2] Of the other states with mandatory inventory reporting, we have previously covered Illinois in detail and will evaluate Michigan’s newly released reports soon. The only other state with mandatory reporting is California, but it has limited value because it only covers the portion of the service line owned by the utility and excludes the portion on private property.

Wisconsin’s reporting is similar to Illinois’, but more detailed
Like Illinois, Wisconsin requires annual reporting and posts the information online in a publicly accessible format as it is received. However, Wisconsin differs by requiring utilities to:

1. Separately report the utility and private sides of the service line. For the vast majority of Wisconsin utilities, the utility side is the portion from the main through the curb stop, and the private side is from the curb stop to the meter inside the building. Reporting on the utility side started in 2004 and on the private side in 2017. There is no clear way to connect the counts for each type of service line for the utility and private side reports.
2. Report the number of each type of service line material categorized by the diameter of the line. We are not aware of any other state that collects this information.
3. Assign all lines to a specific material. In 2018 and earlier reporting years, there was no option to report service line material as “Unknown.” If a utility was uncertain about a material type, it likely reported the material type as “Other Metal.” For the 2019 reporting year, the PSC replaced the “Other Metal” category with “Unknown – May Contain Lead” and “Unknown – Does Not Contain Lead” and provided information for utilities on the new categories in its Annual Report Help Document for municipal and small private utilities (see pages 15 and 17). Illinois first used these two categorization options in 2018.
4. Account for changes in the number of service lines categorized by each material type at both the beginning and the end of the calendar year. This enables users to determine how many LSLs were removed or taken out of service. It also makes it possible to track how many lines of unknown material are reassigned to lead, copper, plastic or another material.

See the full blog.