Wausau City Hall. MWC file photo
WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — Lead service lines in a Central Wisconsin city could soon be replaced at a much faster speed.
Currently, the City of Wausau is replacing lead service lines (LSL) when the City reconstructs streets. The City then offers to homeowners on those streets to replace any lead service lines on their property with the LSL service line replacement grant. With this current process, the City is replacing around 100 lead service lines in a year.
But with a new Lead/Copper Rule, that pace for replacing LSL lines is too slow to replace all the lines in the City in a manageable timeframe. Staff in Wausau’s Public Works Department have been working on a new LSL model that would speed up that process. The beginning work on the new model was presented to the Wausau Water Works Commission at their monthly meeting on Wednesday morning.
Commission Chair and Wausau Mayor Katie Rosenberg says the new replacement model would be done completely by the City utility as opposed to outside contractors. “We just talked about what would it look like if we hired our own plumbers to do that work and do the replacements. Just a brief plan it would be hiring 4 plumbers. It would be $2 million a year to get that done. They talk about doing 300 of those lines if they’re working every moment of the year,”.
With the new replacement plan in its early stages, Rosenberg says the City would explore a variety of funding options for the program. Some of those funding options would include the recently passed American Rescue Plan, the current infrastructure plan before Congress in Washington, and a variety of federal and state grants for infrastructure work.
Along with picking up the speed of LSL replacements, Rosenberg believes the new replacement plan would help with issues residents are experiencing when trying to deal with their own lead service lines. “People are just running out of people to talk to to get this done. It’s hard, people are booked up.
“Even if they wanted to get it done, they probably wouldn’t be able to on the timetable. So that’s just kind of what we’re looking at. We’re trying to be somewhat responsive to what we’re hearing from the public and why they are unable to get their side replaced,”.
At their meeting, Wednesday morning the Commission approved a motion for staff to come back with a 15-year replacement plan for lead service lines at their next meeting.
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