The City of Danville recently mailed letters to water customers about the status of their water service lines as part of recent changes to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) lead and copper rule. At no point is the City’s water unsafe to drink.

The City has always exceeded drinking water standards and publishes a water quality report that details this performance level. The past 10 years of water quality reports can be viewed at: http://www.danvilleutilities.com/water/water-quality-reports.html.

The EPA’s lead and copper rule is a nationwide effort to identify and replace any lead service lines in public water systems. More information can be found at https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/revised-lead-and-copper-rule.

City letters inform customers if their service lines fall into these categories:

• Lead — contains lead
• Unknown and may be lead — requires more investigation

Public water systems that report lead service lines (LSLs) or have unknown material service lines in their inventory must provide consumer notice to those individual customers. These notices must be provided to customers served by the public and private service line no later than Nov. 15. These consumer notices must be provided to customers by mail.

Danville Utilities made an investment in the 1990s to remove lead service lines from the public water system after lead water lines were banned in 1986. The 2021 EPA lead and copper rule required all water utilities in the United States to submit an inventory of their customer’s public and private service line material by Oct. 16, 2024, and to notify customers if their public and/or private service line was lead or unknown, requiring more investigation.

Since private water service lines are customer-owned, no records are kept by Danville Utilities of the service line material. Approximately 18,905 customer letters were mailed stating that there was not enough information on the service line material and that they were classified as “unknown requiring more investigation.” These recently distributed letters met the EPA and Virginia Department of Health (VDH) requirements and included specific language that was required by the EPA and VDH.

Further investigation will be conducted over the next three years to further reduce the number of unknown service lines. An interactive customer survey will be distributed in December allowing customers to upload information about their water line material coming into their homes and businesses.

Danville Utilities is currently conducting approximately 380 test hole excavations to identify water line material to be used in a predictive modeling algorithm. Additional modeling and field investigation will be conducted moving forward to reduce the number of unknown service lines.

The City plans to seek funding opportunities and programs that may assist customers in replacing private service lines. These efforts depend on securing grant funding aimed at minimizing costs for affected property owners. More information on the City’s inventory development can be found at https://danvilleutilities.com/water/lead-service-line-inventory.html.