St. Mary’s County residents can now easily check the material of their water service lines by visiting https://www.metcom.org/leadandcopperrule which provides the results of the St. Mary’s County Metropolitan Commission’s (MetCom) water service line inventory. This inventory took place after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated guidelines for lead and copper monitoring by public drinking water providers. MetCom has evaluated 16,930 water service lines throughout the County to comply with new federal rules aimed at decreasing lead exposure in the U.S. None of the water lines examined were found to be made of lead. An interactive water line inventory map is also available on the MetCom website.

 

The inventory identifies all service lines in our 28 water systems as either lead, galvanized requiring replacement (GRR), non-lead, or unknown lead status. MetCom has completed its inventory by both examining relevant building records and conducting visual inspections.

 

· About 16,423 of the water services to homes and businesses in the County were built after a lead ban on plumbing materials went into effect in Maryland in May 1972 which are classified by the EPA as “Non-Lead”.

· Of the approximately 507 remaining publicly and privately-owned water service lines that were built before the lead ban on plumbing materials went into effect, MetCom performed records reviews or test pitting / visual inspections. Of those inspected, none were found to have lead services lines.

· Note: The 290 miles of publicly-owned water supply lines are not constructed of lead materials, but there may be some small lead pigtail and gooseneck connections still in the system, and while these are not considered by the EPA as lead service lines for this inventory, we will replace them if any are found / identified as a part of our long-term commitment to remove lead completely from our water system.

As required by the EPA, MetCom conducted its latest rounds of lead and copper testing of tap water in 2023. All samples collected from randomly selected addresses throughout the County showed lead levels well below the EPA Action Level for lead of 15 parts per billion. Water quality tests are reported annually on MetCom’s website under Consumer Confidence Reports at https://www.metcom.org/. For more information about the Lead Service Line Inventory, please visit https://www.metcom.org/leadandcopperrule