The City of Auburn has accepted over $900,000 to inventory its water lines and identify where lead is present.
City Council voted on Thursday to accept $917,988 in grant funding from the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Lead Service Line Replacement funding through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund to digitize its records and fill in missing data.
Speaking on FLX Morning, City Clerk Chuck Mason said that much of the records on the pipes going into residents’ homes are stored on paper cards. A census will allow Auburn to update its records.
“Especially the older records, they’re simply written down a card somewhere,” said Mason. “So this is going to allow us to do the work to go through the cards, figure out information that’s missing, get the information that’s needed to be recorded. We’re already a quarter of the way through the process but this’ll allow us to do the project in its entirety.”
The inventory will allow the city to find where lead lines are present and determine whether or not replacements will be needed.
The city’s water system is roughly 140 years old and serves close to 43,000 people.
In 1931, the city began using copper rather than lead for its lines.
