Mandated by the State of Illinois, the City of Monmouth has been replacing lead service lines. Phase One of the project has been completed by Advanced Plumbing and Mechanical, with Phase Two currently out to bid, reports Public Works Director Brayden Bledsoe:
“Phase One was kind of a focus more centrally in Monmouth, but also, we had to focus our high priority addresses, so our churches, our home daycares, our schools. If all those had not been updated yet, a lot of them already had, but if they had not been updated, that was first priority for Phase One,” says Bledsoe.
“Phase Two is going to be coming up. We have three bidders on that project. Initially we were planning on continuing going street by street in town, but we are taking a little different approach. We have an inventory of houses that are known lead so far, of course we have a lot in town that we don’t know what is in the ground, just through the nature of it. We are going to focus on these ones that are known lead and our City crews in the next couple of weeks are going to be going around and pot holing people’s service lines to try and discover their material,” Bledsoe adds.
According to Bledsoe, Phase Two of the project is one of the City’s State Revolving Loan Funds, which is a grant from the State of Illinois in the amount of $2.7 million.
