Water Department asks homeowners to test service lines

Under recent guidance by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, city of Dayton Water and many other local water systems across the country are taking steps to identify and remove lead water service lines to protect public health.

Dayton is taking a phased approach to complete a full inventory of the public and private service lines across its water system, an effort called the Service Line Compliance Program.

The city of Dayton emphasizes there is not a lead problem in the public water supply. Dayton’s water is tested for contaminants daily, and there is an ongoing investment of many millions of dollars to replace older distribution pipes. The Service Line Compliance Program is focused on the privately owned lines that bring water from the public system into homes.

The first phase of the multiyear project involved conducting field investigations of the public service lines at selected locations to help predict the types of pipes used throughout service areas.

The second phase, now underway, involves property owners doing voluntary testing of the service lines on their properties, using directions provided in a “Know Your Pipes” customer survey at daytonohio.gov/KnowYourPipes. There are easy-to-follow instructions for identifying and reporting your service line material types.

This quick, 5-minute survey will provide step-by-step instructions on how to find a property’s main water line. After finding the place where it enters the house, report what color the pipe is on the survey. Then, scratch the pipe with a coin or key and check to see if a magnet will stick to it—magnets will stick to iron and steel, but not to lead or copper.

The third phase will involve a searchable pipe material database to provide an inventory of private service line pipe materials by location. An interactive map will be online later this year.

From this, Dayton Water will move to the next stage to start replacement of public lead service lines and to begin school and childcare facilities testing and monitoring (in 2025).

To effectively reach all of Dayton’s residents, city of Dayton Water has translated the service line program materials to Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Swahili, and Kinyarwanda. Social media posts are also providing contact information for speakers of these languages.

City of Dayton Water employees are available to answer questions. Email slcp@daytonohio. gov or call 937-333-3725.

City of Dayton Water and many other local water systems across the country are taking steps to identify and remove lead water service lines to protect public health.