Rocky Top PD will hand out notices to water customers to check lines for lead
Rocky Top police will soon begin delivering notices to the city’s more than 800 water customers to ask them to report back whether any of their underground water pipes are made of lead.
Mayor Kerry Templin said during last Thursday’s City Council meeting that the notices are part of the city’s mandate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a survey to identify any remaining lead pipes delivering water to customers from the point of their water meters to their homes or businesses.
While the city’s own lead water lines have long been replaced, there still could be homes or businesses using lead pipes to carry drinking water from their meters, Templin said.
He originally brought up the issue during last October’s council meeting.
Lead water lines were common for decades, until studies determined that lead is a human health hazard, and most uses were banned, including in paint and water lines.
“We used to have a lot of lead water lines,” Templin said. “But I’ve been assured we have none of them left (in the city’s system). But some homeowners might still have them from the meter to the house.”
That number could be minimal in Rocky Top, because when lead pipes were popular, they were more expensive than copper, and generally were limited to affluent areas – which Rocky Top is not, he said.
“But the EPA is requiring us to do an inventory, which must be completed by October 2024,” Templin said during the October 2023 council meeting. “We’re requesting that if customers know what kind of lines they have, let us know.”
Templin reiterated last week that if residents don’t report back on whether they have lead pipes, city workers will have to dig down to the water lines in people’s yards to determine whether the lines are made of lead.
“It’s for your own good,” Templin said. “We need to know what your line is.”
Replacement of lead lines that run from the meter into homes will be the responsibility of the property owners, though, and not the city.