Amid a new national push to replace millions of old lead service lines in the next decade, a top EPA official on Monday visited a replacement site north of downtown to see for himself the work Denver Water has been doing for years.

“It’s really exciting, because Denver Water is making great progress,” said Bruce Pigott, the acting assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water. 

“Lead is an extremely serious toxic pollutant. It can lower the IQ among our children. It can cause heart issues in older people. And it can have an effect that's fundamentally detrimental to the health of people. That’s why it's so important to remove the lead lines, because sometimes the lead leaches from those pipes into our drinking water and we inadvertently drink it.

“Denver Water has understood this and has been making steps to remove the lead lines,” Pigott said. 

Pigott’s Monday visit to a Denver street where homes are receiving new lead-free copper service lines (the small pipes that carry water from the water main in the street into the home), occurred a few weeks after the EPA announced Oct. 8 the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, which requires utilities to find and replace lead service lines in the next 10 years. 

Meet the people behind the Lead Reduction Program. 

“The Lead and Copper Improvements Rule will ensure that communities around the country catch up to Denver Water and the good work they're doing to remove lead service lines within 10 years,” Pigott said.

Denver Water’s Lead Reduction Program, launched in January 2020, is about halfway through the replacement of the estimated 60,000 to 64,000 customer-owned lead service lines in the utility’s service area. The utility replaces lead service lines at no direct cost to the customer and provides water filters certified to remove lead to customers enrolled to the program for them to use for cooking, drinking and preparing infant formula until six months after their lead line is replaced. 

The utility also raised the pH of the water it delivers to further protect customers from lead, and works to inform and educate customers about the program. 

Denver Water aims to replace about 4,500 lead service lines every year, and in 2022 received $76 million in federal funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to accelerate that work in underserved neighborhoods. The federal money is expected to pay for about 6,800 replacements. 

“There's no lead in Denver’s Water. What we're doing is limiting the risk of lead exposure and replacing the lead service lines that are in people's homes,” said Alan Salazar, Denver Water’s CEO/Manager, who joined Pigott to tour the replacement site Monday. 

“The federal government is adding dollars and resources, helping us to accelerate the program so we can finish the replacements earlier than we’d originally planned,” he said.

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Pigott said the Biden-Harris Administration has allocated $15 billion to help pay for the removal of lead service lines around the country. An additional $20 billion is available to address drinking water issues, and that money also can be used to replace lead service lines, he said.

Finding and replacing lead service lines is doing more than improving public health, Pigott said, it’s improving the economy. 

“This is creating jobs throughout the community. Contractors are hired to remove these lead service lines, which means that good, well-paying jobs are spread around the community,” he said. 

Salazar agreed with Pigott, adding that the impact of Denver Water’s Lead Reduction Program goes far beyond those customers who have lead service lines. 

“We’re all in this together. I'm proud of the people at Denver Water for taking on the responsibility of solving this problem for our customers, and I thank all the ratepayers — it’s through their rates that we’re able to do this work,” Salazar said.

And I'm proud of the fact that, as a public-facing anchor institution in the metro area, we're doing more than just deliver water. We're improving the prosperity of the of the communities we serve.”