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The Farmville town council took a step last week towards meeting an EPA deadline, while U.S. officials said there will be no extension for counties and towns who can’t file in time.

Back on Aug. 4, 2022, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put out an order. The agency got funding and instruction through the current administration’s infrastructure law to make “rapid progress” on removing lead from America’s drinking water. But to do that, first you need to know how much lead and copper exists in the pipes. And so they set a deadline. By Oct. 16 of this year, all counties, cities and towns have to do a full survey of their respective water systems and submit it to the EPA.

In many areas, we’re finding out, that information doesn’t exist in a document or map of the infrastructure. So the counties and towns are either having to do the work themselves, as in the case of neighboring Kenbridge, or hiring firms to determine exactly how much lead and copper is in their pipes. That’s what the Farmville town council signed off on during their Wednesday, Aug. 14 meeting, agreeing to pay TRC Companies out of Richmond $112,500 to handle what’s been identified as Phase A of the project. Phase A work includes going through the town’s data, plugging it into the survey, submitting it to the EPA and then answering all questions the EPA may raise.

Farmville has about 3,000 meters, which means there’s roughly 3,000 connections that must be listed on this survey. TRC officials will come in, take all the town’s planning documents, all the paper files and go over them, to identify each and every pipe in the system, determining if any have lead or copper. In their proposal, the company said they would bring in engineers to come and go through those documents, listing every line they can find on the plans. Because on the survey, you have to list the address and size of the line, not only to the main connection but to the house too. And you have to do that for roughly 3,000 addresses.

What’s involved for Phase B?

But what if a company can’t identify some of the pipes? That’s ok. You just mark it down as “unknown” and then the town goes on the clock a second time. You have until October of 2027 to identify all of the “unknown” pipes. That would be Phase B of the project.

The hope would be that Phase B isn’t needed. Because it won’t be cheap. Whatever pipes can’t be identified on the planning documents, the company or town will have to investigate. That will mean digging them up in some places.

There are some ways TRC officials have said they can work around it, so that they’re not having to literally dig up every “unknown” pipe. If, for example, they’re having to identify pipes in a neighborhood where all the houses were built at the same time and by the same builder, they can sample. Dig up one line and use it to identify the lead and copper values in all the rest. Another option is to reach out to homeowners and ask for any paperwork or other information they have, such as when the house was built.

How are other towns handling EPA deadline?

So, how are other counties and towns handling the EPA deadline? It varies. Charlotte Court House, in neighboring Charlotte County, has a much smaller system than Farmville. As a result, they were able to get a grant and pay for a contractor to come in and get it done. As mentioned earlier, the town of Kenbridge in Lunenburg County is doing the work themselves.

“Yes, we were tasked with the job of compliance from the state and EPA and no funding is offered to help with or offset the cost,” said Tony Matthews. He works as town manager for Kenbridge. Already dealing with a tight budget, with no money set aside for hiring contractors, Matthews and his staff have taken on the project themselves.

“Thankfully, we have a great operator who has taken the brunt of the task,” Matthews said. “Between himself, my maintenance crew and myself, we did most of the identification and my water operator is doing all of the data entry, in addition to his normal workload.”

And while the town staff is doing the work themselves, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost involved. Matthews pointed out that the staff can’t just stop everything else to take this on, so it means possible overtime and extra expenses for the town, without any help physically or financially from any of the groups issuing this order.

“In a world where everything is costing more, small towns are forced to take the brunt of this,” Matthews said. “Funding is usually at the federal or state level and the trickle effect sometimes stops before it gets to us. We are being forced to do more with less.”

Why no federal funding?

To offset those additional costs, Matthews said, the towns need county, state or federal funding to help with this. When The Herald reached out to the EPA, one of the questions raised was about funding. They claimed money has already been given to states to handle issues with water systems. Except their argument has holes in it.

EPA officials point to $350 billion in the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, part of the American Rescue Plan. In 2022, the U.S. Treasury Dept. said that money could be used for lead service line and lead faucet and fixture replacements. Then later in 2022, the Infrastructure Law allocated another $3 billion to states, tribes and territories for lead service line replacement. But there are two problems with arguing this money should have been saved for monitoring or replacing lead pipes. First, the funds all had a deadline when they had to be used by. And second, when this money was allocated, it was months before the lead pipe survey order went out, so towns and counties didn’t know they needed to set funding aside for a project that didn’t exist at that point.

EPA deadline looms, with clock ticking

Regardless, EPA officials say counties and towns are in fact on the clock, as the deadline is more than just paperwork.

“Any system that does not submit the initial inventory by the deadline will receive a Treatment Technique and a Reporting violation, both requiring public notice,” said EPA Press Secretary Remmington Belford. “(Counties and towns) have had more than three years to review their records and prepare an initial inventory.”

That means fines handed down if the county or town gets a violation, which will be up to EPA officials to determine cost.

Belford also told The Herald that it’s not like EPA hasn’t volunteered to help in this process. He gave several examples where they worked with counties and towns.

“EPA has issued guidance, templates, conducted webinars and offers technical assistance to water systems to complete this important step to identify locations of the most significant source of lead in drinking water,” Belford said.

He pointed out that to speed up the process, counties and towns can mark lines as “unknown” in this first inventory. But that just means they’ll have more work to do in Phase B.