Illinois American Water wants to reassure Peoria residents and city leaders that the utility company is working diligently to replace lead service lines.
Matt White, the senior operations manager for the utility company's Western Division, said elevated lead levels were found in some testing samples taken during the first half of this year, prompting a recent city-wide notification.
He said the high levels discovered in 14 out of 103 samples were related to outdated existing service lines, meaning the contamination is not believed to be widespread across Peoria.
“Over the last couple years, we’ve replaced around 2,700 lead services in Peoria,” White said during a 40-minute presentation and discussion at Tuesday’s council meeting. “As we identify more services, we’re getting better at getting that plan put together and moving towards replacing those. So in 2025, we’re on track to replace 850 or more services that are identified as lead.”
Council member Andre Allen said last month’s notification generated some “hysteria” around the community in asking for cooperation with Illinois American Water to assure “that our constituents have faith in their water system.”
The Lead Service Line Replacement Notification Act signed in 2021 mandates full replacement of lead service lines in the state. White said Illinois American Water has been working on replacing lead service water mains in Peoria for years, and the company expanded its focus on service lines in 2018.
“For most residential customers, we own that service line from the main up to the property line, and then from that property line into the home, the customer owns that section of service line,” said White.
“For the purposes of removing lead in the Peoria area, we’re really considering that entire service line, both our side, the utility side, as well as the customer side of that service line, and looking to identify anywhere that we’ve got lead or galvanized [pipes] on those service lines so that we can work towards removing those.”
White noted lead solder was banned in plumbing as of 1986, so homes built after then most likely do not have lead service lines. He said customers who suspect they may have a lead service line should contact Illinois American Water to have the line checked and possibly replaced.
He also dispelled a misconception that homeowners need to pay for the replacement work themselves.
“When we find those lead services, American Water is paying to replace those — so all the way into the home, from the main all the way into the home,” he said. “I’ve had a couple people say, ‘Well, I don’t want to tell you what I have because I don’t want it to cost me money.’ We want to know where that’s at so we can get it in our plan. It’s at our cost to replace those service lines.”
Council member Alex Carmona suggested customers who may have lead issues with their water could consider getting a reverse osmosis system as a temporary solution until the service line is replaced. Mayor Rita Ali followed that suggestion by noting that boiling water does not remove lead.
Audit completed, budget timeline set
The council also heard a shorter presentation on the city’s 2024 complete financial audit performed by the Clifton Larson Allen accounting firm.
Adam Pulley, the CLA principal who handled the city’s audit, said they were able to issue a “clean audit,” while noting a wrinkle where a roughly $1.5 million adjustment was needed to account for American Rescue Plan Act funding that needed to be included as revenue in the 2023 fiscal year.
“From the compliance side, it was fine,” said Pulley.
Financial director Kyle Cratty laid out the anticipated timeline for the annual budget process, beginning with an initial budget being put on the table on Sept. 23. The council would then meet every Tuesday until adoption of the budget, targeted for Nov. 4.
“We are well underway in terms of kind of budget review,” said Cratty, noting that schedule has been moved forward slightly from past years to accommodate for Veterans Day. “We’ve spent the last month with the directors, looking at creating those budget goals to create that direct alignment back to the strategic plan,” he said.
Cratty also provided his monthly unaudited financial report for the current fiscal year as of June 30. He said overall revenue in the general fund was 0.6% below projections.
“I anticipate us being at budget or higher than budgeted revenues based off of really the trajectory of the revenues we have right now,” he said, adding the revenue is actually up 2.8% compared to last year due to stronger than anticipated sales tax and income tax.
He said expenditures are 0.3% below budget and down 1.4% from a year ago.
