City of Batavia officials are working to get the lead out.
From pipes in a way that’s not harmful to drinking water, that is.
For anyone familiar with the horror stories that came out of Flint, Mich., no one here wants a repeat of that, and they are working hard now to reduce the chances of it happening.
Mike App, executive vice president of Electroscan, Inc., which will be performing work throughout the city to detect lead pipes on properties, gave an overview this week of Swordfish, a technology that can get the job done without having to drill 10-foot-deep holes on someone’s land.
“We have lead, we have lead everywhere. The reason they used lead, to be totally honest, is because nothing happens to it,” App said during Monday’s City Council meeting. “Unfortunately, reality has come back to get us a little bit. We’re all trying to get rid of it, and when we talk about lead we talk about Flint. Flint was the genesis of the entire thing.”
That genesis has since led to the Environmental Protection Agency creating a deadline and requiring that all 50,000 community water systems complete and submit inventory of their lead service lines by midnight Oct. 16, according to Electroscan’s website. The company takes it so seriously, that it has a clock ticking off a countdown by seconds of how much time remains.
There are some half a million lead pipes within the 60 counties in New York State, App said, and the Department of Health has issued grants to help municipalities, including Batavia, complete this task during the next two and a half months.
Electroscan will mail out a letter to Batavia residents informing them that the company will be making a visit, City Manager Rachael Tabelski said.
“It wasn't random samples. It was actually particular homes where we believe lead could be. So if you do get a letter asking you to participate, we strongly advise it right now. There more than likely isn't going to be high levels of lead coming out of your water system. However, the change over to Monroe County Water, that is the issue,” she said of the city’s future plan to make a switch to the new water source. “Not only is it good to get the lead out in general, but right now, you kind of have enough scale built up where you're not having pieces of lead not coming into your water.
"However, when we do the water and the source change, that's a whole different story, and we will need to have either chemical mitigation of the water coming in or elimination of all wet pipes in the city to make sure all our residents are safe," she said. "So it's a process.”
For anyone not familiar with the water crisis in Flint a decade ago, the city changed its municipal water supply source from the Detroit-supplied Lake Huron water to the Flint River, and that switch caused water distribution pipes to corrode and leach lead and other contaminants into municipal drinking water.
Although there hadn’t been issues with the city’s current water source, that introduction of new water created a crisis that reportedly exposed tens of thousands of Flint residents to dangerous levels of lead and outbreaks of Legionnaire disease that killed at least 12 people.
Batavia management doesn’t want to disturb the apple cart in any such way while planning on a switch to Monroe County Water Authority. They are looking for citizens to help out by responding to the letter if they receive one and making an appointment.
To view a video about how Swordfish works to detect lead pipes on a property, go HERE.
There are three ways to schedule an inspection with the company, and these options will be provided in letters being sent out to city property owners.
They are:
1. Scan the QR code.
2. Visit Electroscan’s website.
3. Call the Electroscan Swordfish Help Line at 315-856-3156 and speak to a customer service representative to book an appointment.
