ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – The Escanaba Water Department is making progress on a city-wide effort to keep residents’ water clean.
Several years ago, the department began replacing its lead service lines, as required by the state.
“We went through the entire city and tried to inventory our system based off of records, a small percentage of potholing, and physical verification,” said Water and Wastewater Superintendent Jeff Lampi. “Combining all those records gave us 3,800-some sites out of 5,200 sites in the city, which is roughly 70% of our system that has to be replaced.”
Over the past few days, those residents received a state-mandated letter, which states that they are listed as having a lead service line. However, Lampi says if crews have already replaced a lead service line, no further work is needed.
“The construction is so fast, it’s ahead of our work for identifying our spots,” he said. “All the work that we did this summer didn’t make it into our final product. We might have replaced somebody four weeks ago or four months ago that was still being notified as a lead service line.”
The letter also includes information about lead levels in water, as well as the results of “extensive sampling” of Escanaba’s water. It reads, “Escanaba’s lead (1.0 Parts Per Billion “ppb”) levels in our water are well below the new Federal and State standards of (12 ppb).”
“No amount of lead is safe,” said Lampi. “However, we have very low lead levels in our water, even by the standards that the state and the federal government have put out. That’s not to say that people don’t have issues. Perhaps their household plumbing has lead, but the city is putting out good water and there’s nothing to be concerned about.”
So far, the lead service line replacements have been largely funded through grants. For the remaining work, the City of Escanaba is searching for other means of funding to avoid raising water rates, which Lampi says would be a “last resort.”
“We’ve been very lucky,” he said. “The City of Escanaba has been awarded $40-some million recently for work. However, we are now very feverishly looking for other pots of money that we can get into. We want to make our water affordable without impacting our customers.”
This summer alone, crews have replaced nearly 500 lead service lines. While there is no official timeline for all lines to be replaced, Lampi is hoping contractors will be able to continue this year’s work through December.
“We’re slowly working our way through,” he said. “Within 10, 12, 15 years, we’re going to do our best to replace everything in the city.”
City residents with questions about lead service line work call the Water Department at (906) 786-3291. To see the full letter sent to residents, click here.
