Lead Utility Line Inventory and Asset Management

New lead line regulations from the EPA have prompted many water districts and cities to take action to improve their asset management systems and complete inspections of their water lines. To do this, they needed to create detailed inventories of all service lines and identify those that could be lead. Our clients asked us to help them of creating inventories that met the EPA document standards to comply with these new regulations. FLO started with customer information and property data to help identify non-lead and potentially lead lines. If necessary, we took water district customer data tables and geocoded the customer’s account address to match their data with county tax lot records, especially build dates. These additional property insights allowed districts to identify lines constructed before the prohibition of lead in public water systems as the highest priority for inspection. 

In many cases, we also deployed Esri’s Lead Service Line solution to create detailed GIS inventories for the service lines in the office and field. After loading the assessment results to populate the tools, a randomized selection of service lines was selected for physical inspection in accordance with the regulatory requirements. The Esri solution fast-tracked deployment and proved valuable because it allowed staff to easily visualize the lines that needed inspection, plan out the work, and track the progress as new data was captured in the field.

The Esri lead Line Solution allowed our clients to communicate the findings of their investigation to show compliance with lead line regulations. As Esri built it to meet the EPA requirements, including public web applications, clients benefited from a streamlined and efficient package they could manage in their environment. This solution also allows them to maintain and update data as new lines are installed and existing lines are inspected regularly. Using a pre-built GIS solution allowing organizations to quickly get started and concentrate effort on data preparation and analysis rather than designing the data structure and creating maps and applications. FLO has been deploying Esri solutions for fast-tracking clients for years now, particularly for asset management, as they offer both development time and cost savings and an excellent starting point for other functionality down the line.