Rochester is making a push to eliminate lead from water service pipes - Post Bulletin | Rochester Minnesota news, weather, sports

ROCHESTER — The second phase of a 10-year push to eliminate lead water service pipes from all Rochester properties began last week with a barrage of letters to property owners.

After months of poring over records, RPU staff sent out 1,310 letters Oct. 23, 2024, to property owners who either have lead water service lines or have service lines without any record of what they’re made of.

Overall, 1,310 letters went to property owners. Out of 41,600 service customers, that’s less than 3% of service customers. So far, 225 customers — less than 0.5% — are confirmed to have lead water service lines, said Todd Osweiler, RPU's environmental and regulatory affairs coordinator.

However, even one service line of lead pipe is one too many, Osweiler said.

Lead exposure can cause brain and kidney damage and can also cause permanent neurological damage especially to young children, according to health officials.

RPU will have access to federal and state funding to help customers replace those lines at no cost to property owners.

“We’ll be working one-on-one with customers,” Osweiler said.

Minnesota is set to receive $215 million from the federal Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act made available over five years through the Environmental Protection Agency to fund replacing lead water lines. So far, Minnesota has received $167 million of the funding. Some of that is being used to determine where lead lines may lie.

The University of Minnesota has an interactive map showing municipal water service lines across the state down to individual properties whether they are made of material that doesn’t need to be replaced, are made of lead or galvanized steel that will need to be replaced or if the composition of the service lines is unknown.

In 2023, in response to the federal legislation, the Minnesota Legislature allocated $240 million in funds to pay back the loan portion of the federal funding, said Chad Kolstad, an engineer who oversees infrastructure for the Minnesota Department of Health’s Drinking Water Protection Unit.

“It makes it a very easy ask,” Kolstad said.

Lawmakers set a goal to have municipal water service lines free of lead by 2033. Despite the nearly half a billion in funding secured, there’s still a gap between that amount and the estimated cost of the entire effort.

Kolstad said an estimated 100,000 pipes will need to be replaced at an estimated cost of $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

“We’ll need more funding,” he said.

That’s just a rough estimate.

The first phase of the effort was identifying where lead service lines are. That’s ongoing especially for pipes that are underground between the curb and water main.

That’s why RPU officials dug through whatever documentation they could find before sending out letters. RPU will likely have to dig holes to determine what the unknown pipes are made of.

In Byron, where most of the houses are newer than 70 years old, it’s a safe bet the service lines to homes don’t contain lead. However, guessing isn’t good enough, said Al Roder, Byron city administrator.

Construction records for most of the properties so far show the city is lead-free.

However, records weren’t found for about 350 properties there, Roder said.

“It’s just these handful of properties where we’re unsure what may be used for that property,” he said.

The next step is finding out what those pipes are made of.

“You can’t fix it if you don’t know that it’s out there,” he said.

Once lead service lines are identified, the push to replace them will begin. Areas with schools, day cares and low income families will be given priority for reimbursement.

Some areas that are undergoing utility work, such as parts of the downtown corridor in Rochester, will be replaced anyway, Osweiler said.

In some cities, replacement projects might encompass dozens of properties in a single large-scale project that could also receive prioritization, Kolstad said.