Concord Monitor - Concord on hunt for elusive lead or galvanized steel water pipes in homes

FILE - A copper water supply line, left, is shown connected to a water main after being installed for lead pipe, right, July 20, 2018, in Flint, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) Paul Sancya

Part of the city's inventory of service lines - Badger Street, off South Main Street, is one of the few places where many of the connections have not been confirmed as safe from lead. Concord Water Department—Courtesy

By DAVID BROOKS

Monitor staff

The city of Concord is making a final push to fish and remove lead from water lines, even private ones – except they don’t expect to find any lead. What they’re really looking for is galvanized steel lines installed decades ago.

“Say I was building a house back then. I would be responsible to run the water service from the house out to the street. But galvanized steel costs significantly less money than lead. So unless (lead) was dictated, which it never was in Concord, everybody put in galvanized,” said Marco Philippon, Water Treatment Superintendent for Concord.

As part of a voluntary program to get people to upgrade water lines inside homes, which are the responsibility of the homeowner, the city has been sending out notices to addresses where the city has no record showing that water lines and fixtures inside the building are copper or plastic.

Water customers who haven’t received a letter by the end of 2024 don’t need to worry; it means you have service line materials that do not contain lead or galvanized steel.

In the past year or so workers with the Concord water department have checked on the pipes in more than 1,700 homes lacking firm records about their service lines.

“None were lead and we don’t expect to find lead anywhere,” Philippon said.

More surprisingly, he said, “only 7% were actually galvanized, requiring replacement. If I was a betting man when I started this thing I would have wagered that I would have found a lot of galvanized steel lines.”

According to the city, just 749 water connections are left with no record of the metal used in the water pipes. Another round of notices is being sent out to find them. Concord has a total of 11,900 water connections.

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This work is part of a Service Line Inventory Project begun in May 2023 to identify all water service lines. The data is online at www.concordnh.gov/waterservicelines.

There’s nothing directly wrong with pipes made of steel that has been galvanized, meaning it has been given a zinc coating, aside from maintenance due to rust. The indirect problem is that galvanized steel can absorb lead released into the water in past decades, when lead fixtures and pipes existed in the city’s drinking-water network. Several years ago, Concord removed the last lead fixtures and connections from its distribution system.

Removing galvanized steel pipes, or at least checking the lead levels in water that passes through it, is a precaution to ensure that no lead from past decades is now being released by the galvanized steel.

Even if a problem is found, property owners are not required to make any changes. Philippon is applying for a new grant program announced by President Biden that would cover up to 71% of the cost of replacing any lead or galvanized steel pipes in homes.

David Brooks can be reached at [email protected]