Galesburg City Council voted 6-0 last night in approval of an engineering agreement to take the next step toward removing lead service lines in town.
The agreement, which will not exceed $49,000 in city Water Division dollars, will be used in correlation with a $4 million forgivable loan from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
City Engineer Wayne Carl told council that the replacement of around 2,000 lead lines should now be underway within months.
“We’re going to break that into four different contracts of 500 services a piece,” Carl says. “We’re hoping that the first one we can get out to bid this Fall and start on it this Fall. It will probably take about two years, two construction seasons to get the whole 1,500 to 2,000 service lines replaced.”
Carl says line removal will be prioritized, starting with homes that exceeded the EPA action level both with or without children present. Low to moderate income homes with a lead line will be next.
Around eight Knox College students have been surveying homes with unknown lines. Carl says since they began surveying “we went from having about 2,300 unknowns to about 1,900 unknowns right now.”
In other news, council verbally approved allowing a vigil to take place on the steps of City Hall this Sunday at 6:30 p.m. The Galesburg NAACP is organizing the event and we’ll have full details this afternoon on WGIL.
