by Malcolm Butler
Some City of Ruston residents will receive a letter this week (see below) regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule Revisions.
The letter includes information provided by the EPA.
“The federal government has directed that all water systems (in the U.S.) have to identify every water service line and whether they are plastic, PVC, or whatever versus lead or cast iron or galvanized pipe,” said Walker. “That part was easy. We have already done that. Anything that is lead has to be replaced if we had any of that.”
According to Walker, the city has already replaced all lead or copper-type water lines over the years.
The letter was only mailed to Ruston residents whose water service lines fall under the unknown category.
“None of our city mains are lead or copper or any of the types of material that would have to be replaced,” said Walker. “But the government is making us go in and identified what types of water pipes service each house too.”
Walker said city workers have dug or will be digging within three feet on both sides of water meters to discover what type of material is being used in order to continue to identify
According to Walker anything built in the late 1980s or after should be PVC or something besides lead. So the letter which includes verbiage directly from the EPA was not mailed out to any homeowners whose residence was built after 1988.
“We are 99.9 percent sure anything built after 1988 does not utilized lead or galvanized pipe,” said Walker. “So we are able to take the roughly 10,000 houses in Ruston and say any of them built after 1988 are good to go. But everything else we have to send these letters out to because we aren’t sure about them yet … even if some of them may be okay.”
The EPA has given all water systems (commercial and private) through 2027 to identify whether residential water lines need to be replaced. They will then have a 10-year period through 2037 where any lead or copper or galvanized lines must be replaced.
“We have three more years to identify everything and then 10 years to work through any issues on the city side of the meter,” said John Freeman, City of Ruston Public Works Director. “I think the EPA wants (all lead pipes) gone. The entire initiative is to see it gone.
“I don’t know fully what that means. Does that mean people have to redo all plumbing in their house? That’s part of this equation we just aren’t sure about.”
Ruston officials questioned the EPA on the fact that in order to be fully safe, homeowners would have to put a filter on every faucet in the house.
“In the first meeting we had about this more than a year ago, the government said it was going to have some sort of program to help with all of this,” said Walker. “But that was a year ago. I don’t know that anyone who put this into effect really thought through what it may cost.
“The financial numbers could be staggering if you consider fixing every house in the United States. The numbers are crazy.”
According to Freeman, the city has been working on this for some time.
“All of this is coming from the EPA and the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ),” said Freeman. “This is a mandate. We had to have a listing of knowns and unknowns by October 16 of this year, which we did.
“Thirty days later we were to communicate to all of the unknowns through this letter. That was the next step. Now we develop a plan where the unknowns have to become known.”
Freeman said some of the unknowns are partial unknowns.
“We may know the city side, but we don’t know the customer side,” said Freeman. “But there has not been an occasion for us to know on the customer side. So it’s not fully known on both sides of the meter.”
Walker and Freeman said anything on the customer side of the meter is the homeowners responsibility to replace.
Anyone with questions can contact Beth Bennett at the City of Ruston at (318) 251-8623.
