Water companies may soon be able to detect lead pipes without digging [Video]

PARMA HEIGHTS, Ohio — It looks like a typical lawn behind Cleveland Water’s Parma Heights facility, but underneath this manicured lawn sits a model of a water utility’s service system consisting of different kinds of pipes. If you wanted to identify whether an underground pipe here waslead, copper or galvanized steel, your only option has been to start digging. That got the folks at the Cleveland Water Alliance thinking.

“We need a viable solution for identifying lead service lines under the street without having to dig them up, without having to excavate driveways, without having to disrupt service,” said Emily Hamilton of the Cleveland Water Alliance. “And there was not a solution in place presently.”

Those have been expensive options for water systems across the country, facing an Oct. 16, 2024, deadline from the EPA to submit an initial inventory of their lead service lines with a goal of having …