State combines federal and state dollars to accelerate lead service line replacements, agencies say

Deputy Director Kim Burkholtz of the Minnesota Public Facilities Authority and Corey Matheson, lead service line replacement program manager at the Minnesota Department of Health, updated the Senate Capital Investment Committee on March 25 about the state’s program created by 2023 legislation to identify and replace lead service lines.

“We administer this program very closely,” Kim Burkholtz said, adding that the state paired its general fund appropriation with federal dollars to cover public- and private-side costs so replacements can occur at no cost to homeowners or municipalities.

Corey Matheson said the Minnesota Department of Health received initial service-line inventories in 2024 from 100% of the nearly 1,000 community water systems covered by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. He said those inventories have identified about 90,000 service lines that need replacement and left roughly 280,000 service lines that still require additional identification…