Brookfield village staff are planning to check what material about 85 water service lines in town are made of in order to proceed with the village’s replacement of all leaded lines. To do so, staff now have the ability to discontinue water and sewer services to unresponsive properties until they allow a village representative to inspect their water line connections.
As Brookfield is replacing its lead water lines in accordance with a 2022 state mandate, village staff and contractors have found a number of lines to be made of unknown material, Public Works Director Lauren Moore told village trustees at their April 13 committee of the whole meeting.
Before staff can proceed with replacing the lines that are made of lead, they must verify whether each line is made of lead or copper, Moore wrote in a memo from the meeting.
“[The owners of the 85 properties] are not allowing access, or they’re scheduling appointments, and either they’re not there when our crew arrives, or they cancel it and reschedule,” Moore said on April 13.
Without being able to access the property, staff or contractors would only have a costlier and more time-consuming way to proceed.
“You’d have to excavate every single one. That’s either us doing it in-house or contracting it at $500 or $600 a piece,” Moore said. “Doing it in-house would be very difficult for us as well because we have a lot of work going on with water loss mitigation and capital projects, so it would be a big expense.”
At the lower end of Moore’s estimates, contracting out the excavation work for all 85 lines would cost Brookfield more than $42,000.
Moore said the properties in question are the ones left over after public works employees have made “three, four, up to five” attempts to contact each property owner through “mailings, calls and door knocks.”
The ordinance that trustees approved at their April 27 meeting allows property owners to challenge the village’s discontinuance of their water and sewer services by requesting a hearing before Village Manager Tim Wiberg or his designee within 10 days of being notified that action is being taken. The hearing must take place within five days.
Property owners whose water is shut off can regain access by allowing staff to inspect the lines on their property and paying the fee of $75 associated with stopping and starting water connections.
Officials announced earlier this year at the inaugural State of the Village address that Brookfield is set to complete its efforts to replace all the leaded service lines in town next year.
“It’s kind of the home stretch at this point,” Moore said. “Sometimes, it happens, and [the property owner] is just not available. They have something going on, or they travel a lot. There could be a myriad of reasons as to why people are not responsive, but those 85 got to get taken care of.”
