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The Northern Kentucky Water District, which manages drinking water quality in much of Kenton and Campbell counties, is currently undergoing a federally mandated service line inventory, with special attention paid to lead service pipes in the region. The inventory is occurring in response to revisions in EPA’s lead and copper pipe rule , which began in 1991 with the aim of reducing the amount of lead and copper in drinking water service lines. This rule was revised under both the Trump and Biden administrations, and the water district is now asking local residents to help update their service area inventory by September.

Final inventories are due to federal authorities in October. “We have to identify both sides of the [service] line and include that in the inventory,” said NKY Water District CEO Lindsey Rechtin at the May meeting of the Kenton County Mayors Group. “Any line that is unknown, we have to consider lead.



So we do estimate that about a third of our system–we have 86,000 service lines–we estimate that potentially 30,000 could be made of lead. We need that number to go down.” Get the morning's headlines right to your inbox with our newsletters Every Weekday Morning (The Daily LINK) Saturday Morning (The Weekend LINK) Congress banned the use of lead in drinking water systems in 1986.

Lead was a popular material for pipe manufacture before that due to its malleability–it was easier for builders to bend and construct lead pipe networks in different direc.

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