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Director Rob Schultz lays out Newport's lead service-line risks, testing and 10-year compliance challenge
Summary
Utilities Director Rob Schultz told the council that Newport faces a long-running legacy lead issue concentrated in older neighborhoods, outlined testing and a predictive-modeling approach, and said state law and uncertain funding create major affordability and timing challenges.
Rob Schultz, Newport's director of utilities, opened the workshop with a historical and regulatory overview of lead in the city's drinking water infrastructure, saying most service lines were installed between the late 1800s and 1935 and that the city must navigate a new compliance landscape.
"In 2021, the EPA came out with their draft program, which was gonna be you needed to have a lead service line replacement plan, and they were gonna put an action level to 10 parts per billion for lead," Schultz said, summarizing federal and state developments that frame local planning. He added that Rhode Island's 2023 Lead Poisoning Prevention Act set a 10-year deadline but tied compliance to "contingent upon available funding," which the city has not been able to fully define.
Schultz emphasized that sampling to date has most often identified fixture issues, water-age effects or particulates rather than confirmed lead service-line contamination, but said the service-line inventory and replacement program must address the worst-case pockets and the distribution-system needs that amplify costs.
Council members pressed the director on the practical implications of the state law and whether costs fall to property owners or must be absorbed by the utility. Schultz said the law's language leaves ambiguity and that the city's status as a rate-funded utility limits how much of the program can be covered by existing rate structures without severe affordability impacts.
