Efforts are underway for the City of Auburn to identify lead water service lines.
Back in July, Auburn City Council accepted a grant for $917,988 from the New York State Department of Health for it to conduct a lead service line inventory. At its Thursday meeting council adopted a SEQR resolution stating there would be no environmental impact to the work being done.
Speaking on FLX Morning, City Clerk Chuck Mason said the project will determine which of the city’s service connections use lead.
“What the program is going to do is get the inventory completed throughout these 8800 service connections. An analysis will be done on which of the service connections have the lead and which do not.”
Along with the cataloguing of the lines, city records pertaining to them will also be digitized as part of the project.
“There’s also going to be a continuation of digitizing the records that are used to track all this information,” Mason continued.
Mason added that 2/3 of service connections are presumed to have lead.
To aid in this endeavor, the city is purchasing a vaccuum truck to help with connections that are underground. These trucks are used to remove water and mud from the area being dug up.
Once the inventory is complete, it is expected that the replacement of those connections with lead will be replaced.
