Reading, PA: Lead Service Line Database
February 2024 - July 2024
Reading Area Water Authority (RAWA) Sign
Community Description
The Reading Area Water Authority (RAWA) supplies drinking water to the City of Reading, PA, and surrounding municipalities. The mean household income in Reading is $38,738 and 50% of the population speaks Spanish at home.
Project Scope
EPIC assisted RAWA by developing a data extraction tool to analyze digital customer notes in an effort to inventory and replace lead service lines (LSL) in compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR).
Background and Services Provided
Prior to EPIC’s involvement, RAWA partnered with CDM Smith and its subsidiary, Trinnex, to manage RAWA’s LSL inventory and replacement project. CDM Smith, an engineering and construction firm, created Trinnex to manage a suite of digital tools for water utilities, including a GIS-based system called leadCAST designed to track and model lead service lines.
As part of CDM Smith’s efforts to inventory known service line materials, EPIC was brought on board to analyze the content of customer notes in RAWA’s digital customer service platform to determine whether the notes indicated the material of the customer’s service line. Because RAWA had, years prior, implemented a policy in which employees would inspect and record service line material at all homes they visited for service calls, RAWA had reason to believe many of these digital notes contained information regarding a customer’s service line material. However, the digital notes were not searchable and contained spelling errors, abbreviations, or other inconsistencies that made analysis difficult and required someone to look through each note one at a time. Therefore, EPIC developed a software that searched the digital notes and located certain key words associated with identification of service line material. Results were verified by EPIC staff for accuracy and search terms were periodically amended to encompass newly-learned abbreviations, common misspellings, or phrases associated with identification of a material. Ultimately, with this software, EPIC was able to analyze over 15,000 digital customer notes, identify just under 9,000 of those notes that could potentially state service line material. Just over 4,400 of those notes accurately identified the service line material and the remaining 4,300 notes potentially identified service line material but had to be reviewed in person due to ambiguity (e.g. lead as a homonym). The tool developed by EPIC included the address, parcel, and meter ID of each record so that it could be seamlessly added to the leadcast software.
Challenges and Opportunities
| Type of Challenge | Project Experience | Outcomes and/or Opportunities |
|---|---|---|
| Administrative/ Technology | Although RAWA had extensive digital customer notes regarding service line material, the notes were unable to be searched for keywords regarding service line material, and inconsistencies in note-taking made identification of appropriate key words difficult. | Digital tools like the one EPIC created can be used to cut down the time it takes to go through records that may have information pertaining to lead service line inventories. |
Project Next Steps
RAWA continues to work with CDM Smith and EPA’s Get the Lead Out program to inventory and replace LSLs. The utility will have to review the 600 records that EPIC’s software identified as potentially identifying a customer’s service line material, input that data into leadCAST, and ensure lead lines are replaced. RAWA will likely begin applying for funding to begin/continue the LSL replacement process.