Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Infrastructure Water topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
City manager: 52 lead-service-line tests completed; 14 exceeded state limit, 12 already replaced
Summary
City Manager Gibbons told the council that Garden City tested 52 homes with known lead service lines; 14 exceeded the state’s new threshold, and staff have completed replacement on 12 of those 14. The city is pursuing state grant funding through EGLE and reports about 280 known lead service lines out of 12,000 total service connections.
Garden City — City Manager Gibbons reported at the Aug. 4 council meeting that water-system testing required by the state found elevated lead results at 14 of 52 tested homes with known lead service lines; crews have already replaced 12 of the 14 lines.
Gibbons said state rules require municipalities to test at actual residences with lead service lines and to notify the community when the results exceed the revised, lower state threshold. "We tested 52 homes, all of whom have lead service lines," Gibbons said. "Fourteen of them exceeded the state's new much lower amount for what's acceptable of lead in water...we are required by the state to notify the entire community that we have exceeded our lead limit."
Gibbons added that Garden City has identified roughly 280 confirmed lead service lines among about 12,000 service connections; another 352 service lines remain of unknown material and are under investigation. He said the city has an EGLE (Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy) grant and expected another 15 lead-service-line replacements within the next two weeks.
The manager sought to reassure residents that the exceedances reflect testing of individual private lead service lines — the connection on the private side between a home's plumbing and the city tap — rather than a systemic contamination of the city distribution system. "We're talking about lead service lines, which are the private resident service lines from the city's tap to their home," Gibbons said. He noted that, in many cases, replacement work had already been completed by the time the test results were returned.
Gibbons also described the city's replacement rate compared with state targets. He said Michigan currently requires a 5% annual replacement rate of the city's known lead service lines; Garden City said it has been exceeding that rate.
What happens next: The city will continue testing, pursue state grants to replace private lead lines where eligible, and notify residents as required by the state. The manager asked residents to understand the state-mandated notification language; he said the wording can read alarmingly without the context that the issue is concentrated in private lead service lines that are being actively replaced.
