Department heads around the Tri-Lakes say they’ve already received the majority of responses and what they’ve found is good news — there’s not a lot of lead pipes in this area, so there won’t be too much work needed to replace them.

“We’re in good shape,” Saranac Lake Department of Public Works Superintendent Dustin Martin said.

Lead was not used in water lines much in this area, according to Martin. Previous Tri-Lakes generations used primarily brass, galvanized or black iron lines. Years ago, everyone switched to copper and recently to plastic.

Over the past decades, any time these water crews came across a lead line, they replaced it with a non-toxic one.

The deadline to submit their findings to the state, which will turn the results over to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, is coming up on Oct. 16.

To contribute to these findings, people can contact their local water department to learn how to file their responses.

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Law and money

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Last year, the state passed the Lead Pipe Right to Know Act requiring water providers to take public inventory of their tubes. This came after the EPA announced plans to potentially create new rules which are expected to be finalized this fall, to require the replacing of lead water laterals across the country by 2037.

Every municipality in the state that provides water is required to do this.

Lead in drinking water has long been known to cause a variety of health and mental damages, especially in children.

On Friday, Sept. 27, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced nearly $90 million in state grants for communities to identify and replace lead service lines, targeted for historically disadvantaged communities. No local governments are getting this money, though the North Country communities of Ogdensburg and Lake Luzerne are getting funding.

Lead service lines that connect homes to water mains are typically the most significant source of lead in tap water, according to Hochul’s office.

“Lead pipes are more likely to be found in older cities and homes built before 1986,” stated a news release from her office.

Last year, the EPA estimated there are 494,007 lead service lines in New York, around 5.38% of the total service lines in the state. So far, $22 million of a total $30 million Lead Service Line Replacement Program has been spent to identify and replace lead service lines 3,439 lead service lines across the state.

The 2021 federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $15 billion specifically for replacing lead service lines, as well at a $11.7 billion fund, which states could spend on replacements, among other things.

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Local villages

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Martin said the village already had the majority of responses in and he’s hoping to wrap up in a week or two.

“Anything that we can get from people would help out right now just to finalize everything,” Martin said.

Saranac Lake has around 2,300 service lines, and he still needs information for around 150 at this point.

In all, so far, around 25 have been marked as having lead, but he said the actual number is probably less. Galvanized lines are considered lead lines in the survey.

“I don’t think that we have any that are actually just a lead line,” Martin said.

Tupper Lake Water Superintendent Mark Robillard said his report is not quite complete, but he’s confident they’ll have everything they need by the deadline.

“We don’t have too many left,” he said.

Village Clerk Mary Casagarin said Tupper Lake has approximately 2,002 service lines.

Robillard said the effort to get lead out of water lines in town started years ago, even before he joined the department. Any time they come across a lead line, they remove it and change it to copper or plastic.

Though the village has had issues with iron discoloring its water in recent years, harmful lead is not a concern for Tupper Lake. The iron does not pose a health risk, as it is not absorbed by the body easily in water.

Lake Placid Department of Public Works Superintendent Brad Hathaway said the village has more than 75% of its roughly 2,700 connections done now, and he expects to meet the deadline.

Hathaway said he’s never come across a full lead service line in Lake Placid. There used to be lead S-shaped goosenecks connecting homes to main lines, but he believes all of these have been replaced. They’ve been removed as they go.

This survey is time consuming for the village staff, Hathaway said, adding that it’s important to do, but they were given a short timeline and he’ll be glad to have it over.

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How to check for lead

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Checking if your water lateral line is lead only takes is a penny and a magnet. These pipes enter homes in the basement, either through the wall or the floor.

Lead pipes are a dull gray in color, not magnetic and scratch easily with coins since it is a soft metal, revealing a shiny silver color.

Galvanized pipes are also gray, but they are magnetic and hard to scratch.

Copper pipes are also not magnetic but are brown, bronze or green in color — depending on how long they’ve been there, and are the color of a penny when scratched.

Plastic tubes aren’t metal and are typically blue or black in color.

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Lead behind

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Lead is a neurotoxin. Exposure to it can cause cancers, as well as heart and brain damage in adults and is worse for children whose brains are developing, with neurological damage, behavioral issues and even aggression being linked effects.

“There is no safe level of lead exposure,” according to the EPA.

The use of lead pipes in plumbing was banned in the U.S. in 1986, but the harms of lead poisoning were well known at least a century earlier, with some accounts putting knowledge of lead’s danger thousands of years ago.

Lobbying from the Lead Industries Association kept their products in common use in communities and homes around the country, sometimes by using racist conceptions to shift the blame onto the minority communities lead exposure affected most.

When the ban came, it only applied to installation. The lead pipes already in the ground were allowed to stay — until now.

The EPA is also proposing to lower the measured level of lead in drinking water which triggers action from 15 parts per billion to 10 ppb.