Troy residents ask, once again, why funding for lead service line replacements goes unspent
Troy residents are once again questioning city officials over lead water pipe replacement efforts.
Last year, under Mayor Patrick Madden, the city replaced roughly 200 contaminated lines. Now current Mayor Carmella Mantello has pledged to double that, replacing 400 lines this year. So far, the city has replaced just over 260.
In 2023, the city conducted lead sampling as part of its Annual Drinking Water Quality Report, and found the city's contamination levels were 35.4 parts per billion, which is in the Environmental Protection Agency’s 90th percentile.
Jona Favreau, a Troy resident who helped sound the alarm on lead in the city’s water, says the city continues to sit on funding. The city recently received nearly $14 million in federal funding for the project. The grant follows a previous $500,000 federal investment and millions in American Rescue Plan Act funding.
“There is no safe level of lead in a child's blood. Zero. That that test should come back zero. But now, a year and a half later, I know how many lead pipes $13.8 million can remove from the city,” Favreau said. “And if we're estimating high, that's just about 1,300 pipes, or half of the estimated total that still needs to be removed from this city. And yet, here we are, eight months into an administration that promised to remove all lead pipes during the first four-year term, and we're sitting on the only means in which we can do so. And for what reason?”
Favreau criticized the administration’s willingness to bond for pavement replacements but not to replace toxic water service lines.
Several residents questioned the administration’s hesitancy to bond for line replacements, but Mantello says the city is waiting for the state to OK the use of bonds on private property.
The Republican contends the city continues to lead the way in replacement efforts compared to other municipalities in the state and is waiting for the money to be released.
"The half a million that was announced by the state for lead pipes, if you recall, at the end of 2023, began in 2024, we just got the paperwork this week,” Mantello said. “We now have to send back multiple like data information, engineering information, so we haven't even received that, but we know at least that's coming in quick, and that's reimbursement. We already fronted the money for that, so we're good till the end of the year. Now talk about Schumer's money. That's 14 to 15 mil. Yes, we've called EFC [Environmental Facilities Corporation] and DOH [Department of Health], we're getting the money. We still haven't received the paperwork for that. We anticipate probably a couple more months we'll get that paperwork. But the real issue is, as you heard last night, the constitutionality of using state money. So, the Feds gave it to the state, so it's considered state money. They funnel it through the state. It's the constitutionality of going on people's private property.”
The city began inventorying and replacing its contaminated pipes last year when residents questioned why the city hadn’t spent $500,000 in state grant funding to replace aging lead service lines. Former Mayor Madden, a Democrat, told WAMC that the city hadn’t spent the money because the funding would only be a drop in the bucket to fix the problem. Following public input, the city started the process with only 10 percent of the necessary funding.
Rob Hayes, the director of clean water for Environmental Advocates NY, says Troy continues to be one of the most heavily lead-contaminated municipalities in the state.
“We know that the city, or we've heard from the city, that they're still working through some of the paperwork with EFC [Environmental Facilities Corporation] and DOH [Department of Health], and that there hasn't been a finalized agreement for that funding yet, and we recognize that that does take time, but what it seems like the city can do right now to show their commitment to bonding for lead pipe replacement is to pass this bond resolution authorizing the city for that, when that paperwork is done, when all the sign up has been achieved, that the city can go to market for those bonds as quickly as possible and start that work to get these pipes out of the ground,” Hayes said.
The city, which must meet an October 16th state deadline to inventory its water service lines, has inventoried more than half.
