The area around Liberty HS will soon have workers digging up streets to see if residents and businesses have lead pipes supplying their drinking water. They will look for lead pipes from both the water company side and from the property owner side.

It’s the beginning of a yearslong project to identify and replace pipes throughout Bethlehem, according to Director of Water and Sewer Resources Edward Boscola.

City approved a contract March 15 that will get the remediation project started. Michael F. Ronca & Sons, Inc. won the contract, which should begin in May, Boscola said.

The replacement of the lead pipes, when found, will be paid for by the city from a $2.9 million grant from the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority. Property owners, who are normally responsible for replacing pipe or repairs on their side of the connection, will not be billed for replacing the lead pipes.

“Lead pipes were commonly used for service lines back in the 1920s and 1930s,” said Boscola. “Our records are not very accurate from that time period. Any lead in the system occurs on the service line from the water main on the street up to the house-to individual homes. We have a total of 37,000 service connections in our service territory.

“Of that 37,000, we estimate that maybe on the order of magnitude of several hundred to a thousand might be lead. They’re all from that time period, 1920s, 1930s, so anybody that has a house that’s a hundred years old might have a lead [pipe] svici if that service hasn’t been replaced any time in the last hundred years.”

When asked if he knew when lead pipe remediation might start on Southside Bethlehem, Boscola said he didn’t have a start date.

“This is just the first phase. The goal is to remove all of the lead from the system. That’s going to be a long project for a couple of reasons. Number one, we don’t know exactly where all of the lead is and. number two, each service line is going to cost [about] $10,000 dollars give or take.”

The Bethlehem Health Bureau told the Press that there have been no illness patterns that can be associated with lead pipes in Bethlehem.

“We do not have any data to support health issues from lead pipes,” said Bethlehem Health Director Kristen Wenrich in an email.