DALTON, Mass. — The Water Department has been working with Tighe & Bond on collecting data for the Lead Service Line Inventory Project. 

 

The engineering consultants have been building a database using the GIS (Geographical Information System) and developed a mailer that will be sent to water customers, Water Superintendent Bob Benlien said. 

 

Customers will be able to take a photo of their service line coming in and using a QR code they will be able to submit it along with information so the Water Department can get that information from their houses. 

 

The department has already paid one installment on the grant for approximately $9,000. 

 

The next steps for the project will be to transfer the draft inventory into the GIS database, and identify and address inconsistencies with the GIS location and assessors information. 

 

Following that, they will be adding building age, use code, and other information from the GIS available data to the inventory. 

 

The Water district has old "tickertapes" from when it did the center of town in the 1960s and '70s that showed each connection from the main to the curb was made of copper not lead. It showed how many feet of copper was used to connect to the water main. 

 

Tighe & Bond will be adding this information to the GIS.

 

Tighe & Bond also held a kick-off meeting with Blue Conduit, the company providing modeling services, 

 

"They do the predictive modeling which has been, I guess, approved by the [Environmental Protection Agency] and through their computer program, they can predict how many lead service lines we do have in town," Benlien said.

 

Based on what Benlien has run into in the the last 20 years, he has not seen any lead service lines, but that does not mean the town doesn't have any. 

 

"Any galvanized line that is downstream of what could have been a lead service line would have to be replaced," Benlien said. 

 

"And if you can't prove that there weren't, they just assume that there are. So this program is supposed to take care of all that."

 

District Treasurer and Clerk Melanie Roucoulet and Benlien have also been working with Tighe & Bond to review customer billing and data and identify missing information. 

 

Thus far Tighe & Bond has also worked on developing the mailers that will inform customers of the process of uploading their photos and information, prepared public information handout examples, and initiated the development of the GIS LSL mapping database.