The town of Elon is forging ahead with a search for lead and other potential hazards in its utility lines despite some concerns about the potential cost to replace these obsolete pipes.
Elon’s town council gave the town’s staff the all-clear to continue this inventory on Tuesday in order to check the few hundred residential taps that remain uninvestigated since this initiative began several years ago. Its members nevertheless made this decision on the understanding that they may ultimately have to jack up utility rates to cover the replacement cost for pipes that no longer meet federal clean water standards.
It was thanks to a grant from the state that the town originally launched this venture in 2022 to eliminate unsafe materials from the infrastructure that brings water to the town’s residential customers. This project seeks to identify lines made either of lead or galvanized steel, which may contain lead if originally fed by lead piping, on either side of the water meters that serve the town’s 2,111 residential customers. So far, the town’s contractors haven’t located any lead piping, although they’ve come across 66 locations with galvanized steel on one or both sides of the water meter…