An important deadline is coming up for the city of Jefferson.

Public Works Director Dave Morlan says tomorrow is the deadline to submit the Water Department’s Lead Service Line Inventory to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He points out the reason these two entities want all communities to do this, is because of an initiative to replace all water lines that contain lead, because that material is toxic to young people and who is responsible for replacing those lines.

“The goal is to get rid of all of the lead service lines and just eliminate those altogether. The EPA hasn’t come out with a decision yet as to what they’re going to do about it (to replace lead service lines) whether it’s going to be on the city or the property owners, or who is going to be responsible for it. So we have no direction there of what they’re going to do. But up till now it’s just to identify what we can of what’s out there, what the service line is.”     

City Administrator Scott Peterson appreciates the work that the Water Department staff has done cutting down to under 100 service lines that are left to be identified.

“Thanks to the citizens and the customers, (and) the staff. This is a huge, huge undertaking. You think about that, we have 1,400 water meters and we needed to be able to have that answer for every one of them. Just thanks to everybody because it’s coming together pretty nicely.” 

Peterson adds that while any service lines left to be identified will be labeled as unknown, they will continue to work on that until all are accounted for.