City of College Station Blog

By Jennifer Nations, Water Resource Coordinator

College Station Water Services recently sent customers postcards about whether their water service line is lead, galvanized, or made of an unknown material. Rest assured that the high-quality water from your faucet has not changed and remains safe.

The only thing that’s changed is federal regulations.

In October, College Station joined water utilities nationwide in compiling an inventory of service lines in our distribution system to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2021 Lead and Copper Rule Revisions. Since lead can dissolve into drinking water from fixtures or service lines that contain lead, we developed a complete service line inventory through site investigations and thorough reviews of building records and plans to accurately classify materials as lead, galvanized, non-lead, or unknown.

By late November, not one service line was known to be lead. The inventory breakdown was 78.5% non-lead and 21.1% unknown. Another 0.4% were galvanized and required replacement. Of the 123 galvanized lines, 4 were public, 112 were private, and seven were both.

If the postcard you received indicates your service line material is unknown, it DOES NOT mean it contains lead. The rule revisions treat unknown service line material as “may contain lead” until the material can be documented. Water Services continues to conduct on-site inspections to cross-check existing records, and we regularly update the service line inventory.

In addition, College Station’s water quality is rigorously tested for lead every three years. Our historical testing results show lead levels of 0.898 to 1.6 parts per billion, well below the EPA’s action level of 10 parts per billion.

The Lead in Drinking Water page on the city website includes informational resources, testing details, and steps to reduce exposure to lead in drinking water. If you have additional questions, please get in touch with me at jnations@cstx.gov. 

About the Blogger

Jennifer Nations has been the City of College Station’s water resource coordinator since 1999 after two years as BVSWMA’s environmental compliance officer. She’s also chair of the Water Conservation and Reuse Division for the Texas Section of the American Water Works Association. A native of Fremont, Calif., Jennifer earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental & resource science from UC-Davis in 1995 and a master’s degree in water management & hydrologic science from Texas A&M in 2016.

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