Lead Service Line Inventory
Understanding the Lead Service Line Inventory:
What Juniper Beach Water District Customers Need to Know
Juniper Beach Water District is committed to providing you with safe and clean drinking water. As part of that commitment, we're working to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Lead and Copper Rule Revisions. A key part of this rule is creating a Lead Service Line Inventory.
What is a Lead Service Line?
A service line is the pipe that brings water from the main line in the street to your home. Older service lines were sometimes made of lead, a metal that can be harmful to your health even in small amounts.
Why is Juniper Beach Water District Creating an Inventory?
The EPA requires all water systems to identify and map out where lead service lines are located. This helps us.
Understand the extent of potential lead exposure. By knowing where lead service lines are, we can better assess the risk to our customers.
Prioritize replacement efforts. The inventory helps us plan and prioritize replacing lead service lines with safer materials.
Provide information to our customers. You have a right to know what kind of service line brings water to your home.
What Does This Mean for You?
The District has been busy identifying the material of your service line. This involves checking records and documents, visually inspecting service lines and pipes. In JBWD we undertook major construction projects that has alleviated lead within it distribution system. In 2006 when a majority of the distribution lines and service lines were replaced, no materials included lead. As well during the annexing of Land's Hill into our water system, new distribution lines were installed. In 2022 when new meter registers were installed, this was an opportune time to verify that service lines connecting to the meters did not include lead components.
You have access to the inventory. EPA and the State of Washington have requirements that the LSLI be available publicly. You can find out if your home has a lead service line and learn about our plans for replacement. *During the submittal of the LSLI, JBWD did not discover any lead components within its service lines.
We'll keep you informed. However, we must caution all customers that even though a service line does not contain lead, there may be water lines and fixtures within residences that do contain lead.
What Can You Do to Reduce Your Risk?
Even if you don't have a lead service line, there are things you can do to reduce your exposure to lead in drinking water.
Run your water. If your water hasn't been used for several hours, flush your pipes by running the cold water for a few minutes before using it for drinking or cooking.
Use cold water for cooking. Lead dissolves more easily in hot water.
Consider a filter. You can use a water filter certified to remove lead.
Where Can You Learn More?
View our LSLI document here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTSc2k_-NZyttb1UaCi6SoTLlrJ0Mh4A0uN1A_i2wQ7RxChyYewBaoQsQZb1HKoJWGcimyz29CWp2-S/pubhtml
Contact a Commissioner if you desire more information: 360-474-7171 or contact them via email found on the Contact Us webpage.
Visit the EPA's website. https.//www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/lead-and-copper-rule
Juniper Beach Water District is dedicated to protecting the health of our community. We're committed to providing you with safe, high-quality drinking water and keeping you informed about our efforts to comply with the Lead and Copper Rule.
LEAD in Drinking Water
Lead is found throughout the environment in lead-based paint, air, soil, household dust, food, certain types of pottery porcelain and pewter, and water. Lead can pose a significant risk to your health if too much of it enters your body. Lead builds up in the body over many years and can cause damage to the brain, red blood cells and kidneys. The greatest risk is to young children and pregnant women. Amounts of lead that won’t hurt adults can slow down normal mental and physical development of growing bodies. In addition, a child at play often comes into contact with sources of lead contamination - like dirt and dust - that rarely affect an adult. It is important to wash children’s hands and toys often, and to try to make sure they only put food in their mouths.
Lead in drinking water, although rarely the sole cause of lead poi-
soning, can significantly increase a person’s total lead exposure, particularly the exposure of infants who drink baby formulas and concentrated juices that are mixed with water. EPA estimates that drinking water can make up 20 percent or more of a person’s total exposure to lead.
Lead is unusual among drinking water contaminants in that it seldom occurs naturally in water supplies like rivers and lakes. Lead enters drinking water primarily as a result of the corrosion, or wearing away, of materials containing lead in the water distribution system and household plumbing. These materials
include lead-based solder used to join copper pipe, brass and chrome-plated brass faucets, and in some cases,pipes made of lead that connect houses and buildings to water mains (service
lines). In 1986, Congress banned the use of lead solder containing greater than 0.2% lead, and restricted the lead content of faucets, pipes and other plumbing materials to 8.0%.
When water stands in lead pipes or plumbing systems containing lead for several hours or more, the lead may dissolve into your drinking water. This means the first water drawn from the tap in the morning, or later in the afternoon if the water has not been used all day, can contain fairly high levels of lead.
1. FLUSH YOUR SYSTEM. Let the water run from the tap before using it for drinking or cooking any time the water in a faucet has gone unused for more than six hours. The longer water resides in plumbing the more lead it may contain. Flushing the tap means running the cold water faucet for about 15-30 seconds. Although toilet flushing or showering flushes water through a portion of the plumbing system, you still need to flush the water in each faucet before using it for drinking or cooking. Flushing tap water is a simple and inexpensive measure you can take to protect your health. It usually uses less than one to two gallons of water.
2. USE ONLY COLD WATER FOR COOKING AND DRINKING. Do not cook with, or drink water from the hot water tap. Hot water can dissolve more lead more quickly than cold water. If you need hot water, draw water from the cold tap and then heat it.
3. USE BOTTLED WATER. The steps described above will reduce the lead concentrations in your drinking water. However, if you are still concerned, you may wish to use bottled water for drinking and cooking.