Members of the Plymouth Utility Department are researching the type of material that make up service lines going into homes and businesses.
Utility Superintendent Donnie Davidson informed the Plymouth Board of Public Works and Safety members at their last meeting that recent legislation requires that all lead service lines need to be replaced.
“Every provider must identify, within a certain time frame, the type of material that our service lines are made of,” stated Davidson. “If we discover that we have lead lines that need to be replaced, at that point then we have to make a decision on how we’re going to go about replacing those lines. Technically, the city is only responsible from the water main to the curb stop which is generally at the property line.”
He said federal funding may be available to cover the cost of replacing lines.
Davidson noted that there are not very many lead service lines in the city as crews have replaced them as they have been discovered and believes the city is in good shape.
He said the process should not be too disruptive to residents as they will look through the records to see where there could be lead service lines.
Davidson continued, “A lot of the ones we’re concerned with are in the older part of town, naturally. Lead has been banned as far as service lines since the ‘50s, but we can also go back and research the date of the house which will be another process that we can determine then the likelihood of a lead line being somewhere.”
Davidson added that testing will be done to differentiate between a galvanized line, which is acceptable, and a lead line.
The department will reach out to customers as needed as the process continues.
