What Your Water Authority Letter Actually Means

If a letter arrived telling you your water service line may contain lead, the first thing worth knowing is that it probably does not say lead was found. Most of them say something much weaker than that, and the difference matters.

Why you got one

Water systems across the country had to inventory every service line connected to their mains and write to the customers on the lines that are lead, may contain lead, or could not be identified from records. In Pennsylvania that notification runs through the Department of Environmental Protection. It is not a response to anything found in your water. It is a records exercise, and the letters went out on a schedule rather than because something happened at your address.

That also means the letters arrive in waves. Your neighbor getting one when you did not, or the other way round, tells you nothing.

What the categories mean

There are broadly three, and the letter will name one:

Lead. The utility’s records show a lead service line. This is the smallest category almost everywhere, and it is the one where replacement is genuinely the answer.

Galvanized requiring replacement, or a material that may contain lead. Older galvanized steel and some older brass fittings can hold lead deposits or lead joints. The concern here is real but different: it is what has accumulated inside the pipe rather than what the pipe is made of.

Unknown. Nobody knows. The record is blank, or predates any useful record keeping.

Unknown is not a diagnosis

This is the part the letters handle badly. Unknown is usually the largest category by a wide margin, and it does not mean “probably lead”. It means the paperwork ran out. Many of these lines turn out to be copper, and a good share of the verification work being done now consists of someone lifting a meter lid and looking.

So if your letter says unknown, you have not been told you have a problem. You have been told nobody has checked yet, and that the utility intends to.

Check it yourself in a minute

You do not need anyone for this. Find where the water pipe enters the house, usually through the basement wall near the main shutoff, and look at the section on the street side of the meter.

Scratch it gently with a coin, then hold a magnet to it.

• Lead is soft. It scratches to a bright silver, like a pencil mark on foil, and a magnet will not stick.
• Galvanized steel stays dull gray when you scratch it, and a magnet sticks firmly.
• Copper scratches to a bright penny color, and a magnet will not stick.

That is the same test the utility’s own crews use on the inside end. It tells you about the pipe you can see, which is not proof of what is buried, but it is a strong indication and it costs nothing.

Who pays

This is where it gets specific to your address, and it is the question worth answering before you let anyone quote you. In part of this county the utility replaces the customer-owned half at no direct cost. In another part it is the property owner’s to arrange.

We put the whole thing on one page rather than bury it here: see who pays to replace your service line, which lists it supplier by supplier.

If your supplier covers it, you do not need a plumber for the buried run at all, and we would rather tell you that than take the work.