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The clock is ticking for Kenbridge. The same goes for Victoria and all towns and counties, both in Virginia and across the country. Back on Aug. 4, 2022, the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put out an order. The agency got funding and instruction through the current administration’s infrastructure law to make “rapid progress” on removing lead from America’s drinking water. But to do that, first you need to know how much lead and copper exists in the pipes. And so they set a deadline. By Oct. 16 of this year, all counties, cities and towns have to do a full survey of their respective water systems and submit it to the EPA.

That order made its way to the states and eventually down to local levels. There’s one catch. The EPA isn’t providing any funding to do this survey. Local governments have to do it on their own. And if the material isn’t turned in by the deadline, it’s going to prove more expensive, as there will be a fine attached. So this is where small towns and counties find themselves, having to either add more work to a small staff and do it on their own, or try to find funding to get a company to do it for them.

“Yes, we were tasked with the job of compliance from the state and EPA and no funding is offered to help with or offset the cost,” said Tony Matthews. He works as town manager for Kenbridge. Already dealing with a tight budget, with no money set aside for hiring contractors, Matthews and his staff have taken on the project themselves.

“Thankfully, we have a great operator who has taken the brunt of the task,” Matthews said. “Between himself, my maintenance crew and myself, we did most of the identification and my water operator is doing all of the data entry, in addition to his normal workload.”

WORKLOAD, COST INCREASES EITHER WAY

And while the town staff is doing the work themselves, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost involved. Matthews pointed out that the staff can’t just stop everything else to take this on, so it means possible overtime and extra expenses for the town, without any help physically or financially from any of the groups issuing this order.

“In a world where everything is costing more, small towns are forced to take the brunt of this,” Matthews said. “Funding is usually at the federal or state level and the trickle effect sometimes stops before it gets to us. We are being forced to do more with less.”

To offset those additional costs, Matthews said, the towns need county, state or federal funding to help with this. And when the Dispatch reached out to the EPA, one of the questions raised was about funding. Their argument was there’s already been money given to states to handle issues with water systems. Except their argument has holes in it.

EPA officials point to $350 billion in the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, part of the American Rescue Plan. In 2022, the U.S. Treasury Dept. said that money could be used for lead service line and lead faucet and fixture replacements. Then later in 2022, the Infrastructure Law allocated another $3 billion to states, tribes and territories for lead service line replacement. But there are two problems with arguing this money should have been saved for monitoring or replacing lead pipes. First, the funds all had a deadline when they had to be used by. And second, when this money was allocated, it was months before the lead pipe survey order went out, so towns and counties didn’t know they needed to set funding aside for a project that didn’t exist at that point.

WHAT’S BEING ASKED FOR

To be clear, this isn’t just a simple request from the federal government to grab a sheet of paper and hand over planning documents. Every single pipe in the system has to be detailed in this survey, with an explanation as to how much lead and/or copper exists in it. That means taking a town or county’s planning documents and going over them, mentioning every line on those plans. You have to list the address and size of the line, not only to the main connection but to the house as well.

But what if a company can’t identify some of the pipes? That’s ok. You just mark it down as “unknown” and then the town goes on the clock a second time. You have until October of 2027 to identify all of the “unknown” pipes. As a result, some towns like Farmville in neighboring Prince Edward County are discovering this has to be a phased project. Phase A work includes going through the town’s data, plugging it into the survey, submitting it to the EPA and then Phase B involves answering all questions the EPA may raise.

WHAT ABOUT LUNENBURG?

As for the county, Lunenburg officials say they’re working on their own water lines. Lunenburg owns just one water system and that’s the Courthouse complex.

“We are working on it with assistance from the Commonwealth’s partnership with TruePani, our part-time Waterworks operator and the Building Official,” said Lunenburg County Administrator Tracy Gee.