(3/22) Woodsboro Commissioner Bill Rittelmeyer, never one to pass up an opportunity to bring residents up to date on emerging issues, used its March monthly Meeting to brief his fellow Council members on the mandate from the State of Maryland’s Department of the Environment (MDE) requiring all municipalities to inspect all water connections in the Town for lead piping.
The requirement, Rittelmeyer said, is an outgrowth of the 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act, which charged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to mandate public water systems to test for lead and copper in drinking water at customers' taps at high risk sites located throughout their water distribution system.
In 2021, the EPA published the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions, which require municipal water systems to submit an inventory of the types of pipes connecting all homes to a Town’s water systems to MDE by October 16.
Specifically, Rittelmeyer said, Woodsboro must identify the composition of the lines to every house in the Town’s water service lines and categorize the service line materials as "Lead", "Galvanized Requiring Replacement (GRR)", "Non-lead", or "Lead Status Unknown".
The Town must notify the homeowner if they discover that their connection to the Town’s water system is through lead pipes, with a recommendation to replace the pipes. Replacement, however, will be at the expense of the home owner.
The inventory must include all water supply lines to each home or building regardless of ownership or current use of the house; meaning even if a house is vacant or abandoned, it must be inspected.
Per the 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act, lead water pipes were banned for use in drinking water and distribution. Maryland however, had prohibited the use of lead water pipes in 1972, a prohibition that was subsequently enacted in Frederick County building codes by the prohibition of lead water pipes in homes.
"Fortunately," said Rittelmeyer, "most of the homes in Woodsboro are in developments that were built after 1972 and long after the state had banned the use of lead water pipes; however, almost all the homes on Main Street, 2nd Street, and Creagerstown Road – the old town portion of the Town - were built long before the new codes went into effect, and we have no idea what types of pipes are in use to connect homes to our water system."
"I know for a fact," Commissioner Cutshall said, "that I have a lead pipe connecting my house to the Town’s water system and I suspect many of my neighbors do as well."
Up until 1952, when the Town built the present water and sewer system, each house and building in the Town was on its own well and septic system. Between 1900 and 1950, a majority of homes installed lead water pipes—with some Towns even mandating them for their durability - because lead pipes lasted 75 to 100 years. "While I don’t know what the originally town’s water pipes where made of, I do know that all the original pipes in the Town’s portion of the water system had to be replaced to accommodate growth over the years and are probably made of copper and our current system was inspected and accepted by the MDE is 1977, long after the prohibition on use of lead pipes.
When the Town built the present water distribution system, they simply connected all the homes then in the Town to their existing water lines, which usually were made of lead, since the piping from their old wells was already connected to the interior of the house through an existing penetration. "So the portion of the piping in question for the older houses is from the water main connection to the interior of the house," Rittelmeyer said. "we just have to verify what the pipes are made of from the water main to the water meters in the houses."
Because Maryland banned the use of lead water pipes in 1972, the MDE Lead Pipe Inventory criteria calls for Towns to prioritize the inspection of water pipe connections for homes built before 1972. However, the inventory still requires a certification for all homes, which will require the Town to document that homes built after 1972 were built to the updated code.
For homes built before 1972, "Town staff will have to enter every home, locate the pipe connecting the house’s water system to the Town’s water system, and then verify that it is not made of lead, or galvanized metal.
"Given the pushback the Town received by some in the Town to allow access to their homes for the installation of updated water meters last year, I fear we will be met with a fair amount of pushback by residents who will not understand that we are not doing this for the fun of it, but because we’ve been directed to do it," intoned Rittelmeyer.
While the focus of the inspection will be on identifying lead pipes, Town staff also has to identify if any galvanized pipes are in the line connecting the house to the water system. The concern being that unless the Town can document that there has never been a lead pipe upstream of the galvanized pipe, the pipe may in fact be contaminated with lead particles and will be classified by the MDE as pipes containing lead and subject to replacement at the homeowner’s expense.
"We have until October 16th of this year to complete the inventory. There is no grace period. We have to get it done," Rittelmeyer said. "This will be a monumental task. And I don’t think we have the resources to do it. We have no idea how much time this inventory is going to take or how much it’s going to cost us, or for that matter, what procedures we are going to use.
"All we know right now is that we are under the gun to get it done. And if that is not bad enough, the forms we are supposed to use to fill in the data have been taken down by the MDE because they found errors in them, so we are not even sure exactly what information, other then the noting of lead and galvanized pipes, MDE wants."
"It’s going to be disruptive enough going into all the homes once to do this inventory, I can’t imagine the public response of discovering we have to go back in again because MDE made additions to the list of items they want noted."
Unlike Woodsboro, other Towns are already working on the inventory. Walkersville incorporated their inventory into their water meter upgrade program begun in 2022. Similar to the recently completed Woodsboro meter replacement effort, Walkersville is replacing all their existing water meters. "Every time we went into a home, we inspected the piping the water meter was connected to," said Walkersville Town Manager Sean Williams, "as a result, Walkersville will meet the deadline."
Thurmont Town Manager Jim Humerick said Thurmont began working on the inventory when the mandate was issued in 2021. "We’ve narrowed down the houses that we need to inspect and Town staff is now actively doing the inspections."
Taneytown, like Thurmont, began work on their inventory when the mandate was issued in 2021. "We recently replaced a major water line in the old part of Town," Taneytown Manager Jim Wieprecht said, "and in the process of re-hooking up the water lines, we actually got a chance to inspect the pipes to the houses at their connection to the shut off valves, so we didn’t actually need to go into people’s homes. Because of that, the number of homes we need to actually go into and verify is now much smaller."
Union Bridge is taking another approach. Currently it plans to ask all homeowners to self-certify by looking at the water pipes coming into their house, take a picture of it, and stick a magnet on it. "If it sticks to it, it’s galvanized, if it doesn’t stick to it, it is either lead or copper," Union Bridge Commissioner Bret Grossnickle said, noting homeowners will be able to distinguish the difference between lead, copper and even plastic lines.
Whether the Union Bridge approach will fly with the MDE is still up in the air. "The MDE is looking for trained individuals to do the inspection, not homeowners," said a local water superintendent. "MDE is not fooling around with this."
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