Nearly 300 homes in Bennington have already had their lead water pipes replaced under a multiyear, multimillion dollar project, putting the town ahead of the curve compared with the rest of the state.
Funded by an $11 million federal grant, the project has benefited 294 homes since it started in the spring of 2021. About 350 more homes will undergo the same water pipe upgrade by the time the project is expected to end in 2024, said Bennington’s assistant public works director, Larry Gates.
The infrastructure work involves switching out lead service lines — pipes that carry drinking water from a water main to residences — with a safer material.
Lead is a highly toxic metal that can cause serious and permanent health problems, especially to children. No amount of lead in drinking water is safe, experts say. Too much lead in the body, or lead poisoning, can damage the brain, kidneys and nervous system.
Lead was widely used in drinking water systems throughout the country until it was federally banned in 1986 because of health hazards. Under the Lead and Copper Rule, the U.S. government is now mandating entities that maintain water systems – such as municipalities, schools and business complexes – to assess whether their service lines contain lead.
Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation estimates the state has 650 water systems. Like others throughout the country, they have until October 2024 to complete an inventory of the materials in their service lines, after which the necessary replacements would take place.
There are still as many as 10 million lead service lines in cities and towns across the country, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The federal government committed $15 billion to replacing these lead pipes, under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.
Other than Bennington, the state government so far knows of no water system in Vermont that has completed an inventory, much less started a lead replacement project, said Ben Montross, Vermont’s drinking water program manager.
“Bennington is out ahead of most other systems in the state,” he said. “They got a jumpstart.”
Based on the state’s initial survey of municipal officials and records following the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, several years ago, no other water system in Vermont contained lead as extensively as Bennington’s did, Montross said.
However, “there certainly might be some,” he said. “The inventories that need to be done in the next two years will identify where they are, if they exist.”
The town of Bennington estimates that it has about 1,600 service lines fully or partially made of lead, or of unknown material.
The town was in the right place at the right time to receive the $11 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, making the service line replacement possible.
The municipality had decided in 2017 to replace its lead service lines, knowing a significant portion of its water infrastructure system contained lead. Working with MSK Engineering and aided by old municipal records, the town began mapping those pipes.
“We were ready,” Bennington Town Manager Stuart Hurd said. “We had the maps, we had the knowledge and, thus, we were able to secure the entire $11 million that came to Vermont.”
A single lead service line replacement apparently costs between $5,000 and $10,000, depending on the location. A home equates to one service line.
The grant enables the municipal government to be reimbursed for the work of MSK Engineering and the construction company. Casella Construction won the bid for the project’s first two phases, which has amounted to $1.35 million, said Gates, of the town’s public works department.
Casella was also awarded the contract for the third phase, at $1.25 million, which would involve 89 homes. The work is scheduled to start in February or March, Gates said.
The cost of MSK Engineering’s work is separate and wasn’t immediately available.
Under the project, town leaders want to assess the service lines in 2,000 homes. Although the service line replacement is free to homeowners, he said a few hundred owners have not yet responded to the municipal government’s mailings about allowing the work on their property.
“They’re just not really responding back to us and saying, ‘Yes, I want a free lead service line,’” Gates said. “The problem is trying to figure out which houses still have lead and which ones don’t.”
This lack of communication has contributed to delays in the project, he said, in addition to pre-construction work that turned out to be more complicated than expected.
Project managers initially estimated that the work would conclude in the summer of 2023, but the revised target is fall of 2024. A page on the Bennington town website provides information and updates about the project.
In the meantime, until the work is completed, the town continues to take measures to prevent lead from leaching into local drinking water. That involves adding lime and carbon dioxide to the water to mitigate pipe corrosion.
The town began this program in 1977, becoming one of the first public water systems in the U.S. to install modern corrosion control.