Members-Only Resources

ASDWA has developed a members-only page for LCRR information updates and materials from the state workgroups. ASDWA members and their staff can access the page here: Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR) – States Only – ASDWA (login required).

ASDWA Lead Service Line Inventory Framework

Throughout 2021 and 2022, ASDWA worked with the Lead Service Line Inventory workgroup to develop the State Implementation Framework for Lead Inventory Requirements under EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR) and Template for CWS and NTNC Systems. The purpose of this framework and template is to provide useful and consistent information to primacy agencies, water systems, and consultants to start the development of lead service line inventories while EPA develops inventory guidance. The intent of this framework is to serve as a prequel for EPA’s Inventory Guidance and to ensure that everyone is working off the same information when starting inventories. The inventory template is intended to be used by states and water systems as a starting point for inventory development and data collection.

Communications to EPA

Throughout 2021, ASDWA worked with its members to develop a series of six letters to be sent to EPA. ASDWA divided the LCRR into eight sections, and these letters address each section.

1. Lead Testing in Schools and Childcare Facilities Letter
2. Lead Action and Trigger Level, Corrosion Control, Water Quality Parameters, Find and Fix, and Source and Treatment Changes Letter
3. Lead Service Line Inventory and Replacement Plan Letter
4. Public Education and Public Notification Letter
5. Sampling and Monitoring Letter
6. Small Systems Issues Letter

White Paper: Lead Service Line Inventories

In August 2019, ASDWA developed a white paper on lead service line (LSL) inventories that outlines different state approaches for surveying LSLs and includes recommendations for voluntary and mandatory surveys.

In September 2020, ASDWA worked with BlueConduit to publish a white paper, Principles of Data Science for Lead Service Line Inventories and Replacement Programs. The paper outlines important considerations for state regulators and utility leadership when using statistical and predictive methods for LSL inventory and replacement

Webinar Recordings

• Predictive Tools for Lead Service Line Inventories

Original Broadcast: April 10, 2020

Learn about state and utility experience with predictive tools and algorithms for lead service line inventories.

• Lead Service Line Replacement for States

Original Broadcast: April 19, 2017

Learn about the complex issues and solutions to lead service line replacement.

Several states made minor changes to their policy and regulations in the aftermath of the Flint, Michigan lead crisis. Notable actions included state-level mandatory and voluntary lead service line inventory requirements put forth by Wisconsin, Illinois, California, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, Washington, and others as detailed in the ASDWA white paper on lead service line inventories.

Some examples of additional state action include:  

Ohio

In 2016 and 2017 Ohio updated their Lead and Copper Rule to incorporate changes mandated by their State Legislature to lead notification and monitoring at community and non-transient non-community public water systems. The new rule includes requirements for public water systems to submit distribution system lead maps to Ohio EPA; systems are required to submit an updated distribution system lead map to the state every 5 years. Water systems are required to issue a Lead Consumer Notice for each tap sampled for lead within 2 business days of the receipt of the laboratory results. Systems must also issue a lead public notification to the entire system within 2 business days of the receipt of the laboratory results indicating there is a lead action level exceedance.

Michigan

In 2018 Michigan revised and updated their state Lead and Copper Rule, lowering the lead action level from 15ppb to 12 ppb effective January 1, 2025. The law also requires water systems to submit a Distribution System Materials Inventory to the state identifying the materials of service lines in the distribution system. The inventory must be updated every 5 years and water systems with lead service lines must report to the state annually on the status of lead service line replacement efforts. The rule update also requires water systems with lead service lines, regardless of lead action level values, to replace all lead service lines at an average rate of 5 percent per year. More information on Michigan’s lead rule is available here: EGLE – Lead and Copper Rule (michigan.gov)

Colorado

In December 2019 EPA approved a variance decision for an alternative treatment technique for Denver Water under the 1991 LCR. Rather than adding orthophosphate as a corrosion inhibitor as required under the 1991 LCR after its Action Level Exceedance (ALE) in 2012 and creating downstream nutrient problems, Denver Water proposed a comprehensive Lead Reduction Program Plan (LRPP) that focuses on increasing the pH and alkalinity, conducting an accelerated lead service line replacement (LSLR) program to replace all lead service lines (LSLs) in 15 years, and implementing a communications, outreach and education plan. The variance also requires Denver Water to provide filters to everyone in their service area with known or suspected LSLs until the line is removed or confirmed not to be lead.

Colorado has also taken steps beyond the Federal LCR requirements, including limiting reduced monitoring to annual monitoring (rather than triennial monitoring) beginning in 2017 and reviewed water system monitoring plans to ensure that all the lead compliance samples were being sampled at appropriate locations. Understanding the extensive expertise, time, and expense required to execute pipe-loop study are often beyond reach for small and medium sized drinking water systems, Colorado worked with a consulting firm contractor to develop an immersion testing protocol (i.e. coupon study) that could be used by small to medium water providers for both lead and copper compliance and also for predicting how treatment changes would affect metal dissolution. Denver Water performed testing of the immersion study and compared it to their pipe loop study helping to validate the protocol as being equally predictive of relative performance of different treatment options on metal dissolution. Several systems have now used this protocol with great success.

In March 2014, the National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) Lead and Copper Rule Working Group convened to advise EPA in addressing five issues with the existing LCR, including lead sampling, public education, and lead service line replacement. The NDWAC Working Group Report provided detailed recommendations that were, in turn, summarized by the full NDWAC in a letter to the EPA Administrator, paving the way for future regulatory action. 

In January 2018, EPA held an LCR Federalism Consultation with state and local officials, as well as water associations, as a part of the long-term revisions to the LCR. ASDWA submitted detailed comments to EPA. Building on these comments, ASDWA also published a Costs of States’ Transactions Study (CoSTS) in April 2018.

In November 2019, EPA published proposed Lead and Copper Rule Revision (LCRR). ASDWA provided comments on the proposed LCRR and included an update to the CoSTS model.

EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) provided additional feedback on EPA’s proposed LCRR. The report recommended EPA lower the lead action level to 10 micrograms per liter, adjust the benefit-cost analysis to better quantify the benefits of reduced levels of lead in drinking water, and improve the public education and risk communication requirements in the proposed rule.

EPA published the final LCRR in the Federal Register on January 15, 2021. The final rule includes several new provisions and changes to the LCR:

• Using science-based testing to better locate elevated levels of lead in drinking water through 5^th liter tap sampling at homes with a lead service line
• Establishing a trigger level of 10 micrograms/L to jumpstart mitigation earlier and in more communities.
• Driving more and complete lead service line replacements by requiring full LSL replacement when water systems exceed the trigger level or action level.
• For the first time, requiring lead testing in elementary schools and child care facilities.
• Requiring water systems to identify and make public the locations of lead, non-lead, and unknown service lines through an LSL inventory.

LCRR Effective Date Extension and Review

On March 12, 2021, EPA published two notices that impact implementation for the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR):

• The first notice delays the effective date of the LCRR from March 16, 2021 to June 17, 2021. This notice does not change the rule provisions or the compliance date of January 16, 2024. There is no public comment requested and this delay goes into effect as of March 12^th.
• The second notice proposes to further delay the effective date of the LCRR until December 16, 2021 and proposes to delay the compliance date from January 16, 2024 to September 16, 2024. EPA is asking for public comments on this proposal, which must be submitted by April 12, 2021. If the effective date is delayed until December, EPA intends to conduct stakeholder outreach throughout the review period to gain additional public input on the LCRR and potential changes to the rule, particularly from communities that are most at-risk of exposure to lead in drinking water.

There may be additional or alternative regulatory options the Agency is considering. ASDWA will update this page when more information becomes available.

The 1991 Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) established a maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) of zero for lead in drinking water and a treatment technique (TT) to reduce corrosion of lead and copper within the distribution system. The TT focused on the 90^th percentile of first-draw 1-Liter samples taken at customers’ taps that were thought to potentially have high lead concentrations. If the 90^th percentile of all the required samples was greater than the lead Action Level (AL) of 15 ppb, then additional actions such as corrosion control treatment, public education, and replacement of 7% of the lead service lines annually were required.

In 2000, EPA published revisions to the LCR to address implementation issues arising from legal challenges to the 1991 rule. The American Water Works Association (AWWA) and other water associations sued EPA on “control versus ownership” of lead service lines on private property. AWWA won the lawsuit on an administrative issue, as EPA didn’t propose a potential regulatory requirement for mandatory replacement of lead service lines as required by the Administrative Procedures Act. After 2000, systems that exceeded the AL conducted partial lead service line replacements, i.e., replacing the portion of the lead service line owned by the water system in the street right-of-way.

After an elevated lead event in D.C. in 2003 and 2004, EPA conducted a year-long review of lead in drinking water and released a Drinking Water Lead Reduction Plan. Later in 2004, EPA published minor corrections to the LCR to reinstate text that was inadvertently dropped from the rule during previous revisions.

In 2007, EPA revised the Lead and Copper Rule to enhance implementation in the areas of monitoring, treatment, customer awareness, and lead service line replacement. The update also enhanced public education requirements and ensured drinking water consumers receive is: meaningful, timely and useful information. These changes are also known as the “Short-Term Revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule.”

In 2010, EPA’s Office of Water requested the Science Advisory Board (SAB) evaluate the current scientific data to determine the effectiveness of partial lead service line replacements (PLSLR) in reducing drinking water lead levels. In its report, the SAB concluded that weight of evidence found that partial lead service line replacement could increase lead concentrations in drinking water for a period of days to weeks, or even several months. Based on the limited information at the time, full lead service line replacement was found to be generally effective in reliably reducing long-term lead concentrations in drinking water.

In 2011 Congress passed the Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act (RLDWA, P.L. 111-380). This bill revised the definition of lead-free by lowering the maximum lead content of the wetted surfaces of plumbing products (such as pipes, pipe fittings, plumbing fittings and fixtures) from 8% to a weighted average of 0.25%. EPA proposed a rule in January 2017 to implement the RLDWA and on September 1, 2020, EPA published the final regulation “Use of Lead Free Pipes, Fittings, Fixtures, Solder, and Flux for Drinking Water.”

In March 2014, the National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) Lead and Copper Rule Working Group convened to advise EPA in addressing five issues with the existing LCR, including lead sampling, public education, and lead service line replacement. The NDWAC Working Group Report provided detailed recommendations that were, in turn, summarized by the full NDWAC in a letter to the EPA Administrator, paving the way for future regulatory action.

The Flint water crisis started in 2014 when Flint switched its source of water and became a public health emergency in 2015 due to elevated levels of lead in water across the city. On February 29, 2016, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy sent letters to each governor and public health commissioner asking them to re-examine what was being done in their state to reduce lead in drinking water. Later that year (October 2016), EPA published the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions White Paper. This White Paper provided examples of regulatory options to improve the existing rule and highlighted key challenges, opportunities, and analytical issues presented by these options.

In December 2016, Congress passed the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act (P.L. 144-322), which included authorization of $100 million for communities facing drinking water emergencies, including helping communities recover from lead contamination. In addition, the WIIN Act added section 1414(c)(5), “Exceedance of Lead Level at Households,” that required 24-hour public notification of exceedance of the Lead Action Level. This Section also required EPA to develop a Strategic Plan for how EPA, primacy agencies, and water systems would provide targeted outreach, education, technical assistance, and risk communication.

In 2017, as a part of EPA’s ongoing effort to understand and assess lead exposure to children, EPA completed a peer review of draft scientific modeling approaches to inform EPA’s evaluation of potential health-based benchmarks for lead in drinking water.

In March 2014, the National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) Lead and Copper Rule Working Group convened to advise EPA in addressing five issues with the existing LCR, including lead sampling, public education, and lead service line replacement. The NDWAC Working Group Report provided detailed recommendations that were, in turn, summarized by the full NDWAC in a letter to the EPA Administrator, paving the way for future regulatory action. 

In January 2018, EPA held an LCR Federalism Consultation with state and local officials, as well as water associations, as a part of the long-term revisions to the LCR. ASDWA submitted detailed comments to EPA. Building on these comments, ASDWA also published a Costs of States’ Transactions Study (CoSTS) in April 2018.

In November 2019, EPA published proposed Lead and Copper Rule Revision (LCRR). ASDWA provided comments on the proposed LCRR and included an update to the CoSTS model.

EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) provided additional feedback on EPA’s proposed LCRR. The report recommended EPA lower the lead action level to 10 micrograms per liter, adjust the benefit-cost analysis to better quantify the benefits of reduced levels of lead in drinking water, and improve the public education and risk communication requirements in the proposed rule.