The city of Troy hit a milestone this week in its goal to inventory lead contaminated water lines. It comes as municipalities across New York race to meet a state deadline to inventory all lines by October.
51 percent of Troy’s waterlines have now been tested. But Mayor Carmella Mantello says the next 50 percent will require more legwork. The Republican, who took office in January, has pledged to replace all of the contaminated service lines during her first four-year term. Mantello says she will continue what she calls an aggressive public awareness campaign, going door-to-door and tabling at public events, to reach the goal.
“This is a critical issue whereby no parent should be afraid to turn on their tap, and wonder, ‘Is there lead coming down that tap,’” Mantello said.
Last year, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Lead Pipe Right to Know Act, which requires municipalities to inventory and publicize their water service line stock. Localities have until October 16 to complete the inventory.
Democratic City Council President Sue Steele says she has some concerns.
“We've only made a 2 percent growth in four months, which says to me, we need to change tactics,” Steele said. “I would suggest outreach directly to landlords, I think that the first response were primarily homeowners who were concerned. Now, I think we need to focus on landlords and tenants.”
Mantello says the city is working to coordinate replacements with other city projects. She says by the end of the year, she hopes to have at least 70 percent of the lines tracked. This year, the city has replaced 30 lines, totaling 131.
Rob Hayes, Director of Clean Water at Environmental Advocates NY, says Troy continues to detect some of the highest levels of lead contamination in the state – making it a prime candidate for state and federal funding. Hayes says the city has already received nearly $13 million.
“Given the average costs of lead pipe replacements that we've been seeing in Troy, that money should be able to fund well over 800 replacements, potentially over 1,000 replacements,” Hayes said. “That's really the pace that Troy needs to be at, if they're going to meet the mayor's goal of replacing all of the city's lead pipes in four years.”
Hayes says Troy has been more successful than other municipalities.
“We've seen other cities like Albany and Syracuse, where they've started to take steps to begin replacing pipes. Many of these cities have gotten funding from the federal government like Troy has, in order to jumpstart that work. But I think in Troy, we really do to see these pillars, to make that program as good as possible, are going to help kind of keep it at the forefront of this issue going forward,” Hayes said.
Troy’s water supply serves approximately 135,000 residents across eight municipalities. Roughly 6,000 services lines throughout the city remain unverified.
According to the city’s Department of Public Utilities, lead is typically found in waterlines of houses built before 1940. DPU provides corrosion control, which reduces the amount of lead dissolved in household plumbing.
The city continues to encourage residents to contact the DPU to get their pipes tested and/or receive a water filter.
Greg Campbell-Cohen is a Troy resident and activist. Concurring with the mayor, he says a majority of inventoried lines came from newly built homes. Campbell-Cohen says the city needs to stay vigilant and work quickly to replace lines.
“The city's access to big time contractors is going to look very different if they bond out for lead service line replacement, because they can offer like a scope of work that people would move for or people would like establish new programs to complete,” Campbell-Cohen said. “Whereas if you're getting like a million dollars here and million dollars there, there are contractors that will do that work demonstrably, those people exist, but there is a ceiling to how many people will do that kind of work. In a way that's not true if you're looking at a massive project.”
In an effort to reduce lead exposure, residents are advised to run the tap for several minutes to flush out the line, replace contaminated plumbing fixtures, and use cold water for cooking.
