Crews replacing a lead service line on Bank Street in January. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
A massive effort to replace lead water service lines at properties across Red Bank is about to enter its second phase, with work beginning in the coming months across the eastern portion of the town.
A chart from the presentation to the borough council on the lead service line project. .(Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
Under phase one, which covers the census tract along the westernmost section of town, borough contractors have replaced 345 lead service lines with about 200 more to go.
“That is impressive,’’ Jaclyn J. Flor, President and CEO, of the Red Bank based engineering firm ENGenuity Infrastructure told the Borough Council during a presentation on the project Thursday.
“You blew away the ten percent you were required to do,” by state law, she added.
Townwide, there are 463 homes with known lead service lines that must be replaced under a 2021 state law requiring towns to catalogue and begin replacing them.
There are certainly many more. But because of shoddy record keeping over the past century and a half, there are many homes where no one knows what the water line is made of until crews dig a hole and look.
And so, as they did on the west side, crews will need to dig an estimated 2,000 so called “test pits” across the eastern portion of town for the second phase of the project. That project could go out to bid within the next few weeks, Flor said.
The work will be done to meet a state deadline requiring the town to send certified letters to the owners of all homes known to have lead or galvanized service lines by August 15.
Flor said if all goes smoothly, the digging could begin by late spring, bringing the small army of backhoes and construction crews that became a common sight on the West Side through much of 2023 to the eastern portions of town. In phase one, crews were able to dig up to 30 pits per day.
So far, those test pits have revealed a far higher number of lead lines than anyone had predicted when the project began.
Based on similar projects elsewhere, officials estimated 10-20 percent of homes would have lead service lines. That number turned out to be closer to 50 percent.
“The challenge was, you did 1,000 test pits and 50 percent of them were lead, that’s higher than anyone would have foreseen or guessed at,” Flor said. Due to a slightly less aged housing stock and other factors, Flor said officials are hopeful the percentage will be lower in phase two.
The total cost of phase one was $8.8 million. The project is paid for by a mix of borrowing by the town, low interest loans from the state, and other loans that are entirely forgivable, depending on various factors such as average income levels in a given census tract.
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