Over the past two years, the City of Wilmington and Wilmington Water have partnered with the University of Delaware Water Resources Center to help develop the City’s Service Line Inventory Map, which ensures our continued compliance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s revised Lead and Copper Rule.

The Water Resources Center’s Martha Narvaez (Associate Director) and Andrew Homsey (GIS Services Manager) supervised eight graduate and undergraduate students as they reviewed more than 70,000 work orders dating back to 1916 to help us inventory the City’s water supply system.  The information included service line data from the City’s as-built plans and asset management system, as well as from its meter shop, licensing and inspection, and insurance records.

The students are:

• Lydia Franks, Master of Water Science and Policy, 2024
• Alex Makowski, Master of Public Administration, 2023
• Elizabeth Shields, Master of Public Policy, 2023
• Megan Wassil, Master of Water Science and Policy, 2025
• Aaron Balmer, BA Wildlife Conservation and Ecology, 2025
• Cooper Feeny, BS Economics/BA Public Policy, 2025
• Dmitriy Rybin, Engineering, 2026
• Michele Wassil, BS Environmental Science, 2027

The documentation the students reviewed ranged from work orders written in cursive from the early 1900s to data gathered by today’s GIS mapping and artificial intelligence systems.   The students were then able to provide the City and Wilmington Water with the needed inventory information, including the materials used, the sizes and locations of the lines, and their dates of installation.

This investigation work is taking place throughout the nation over the next few years because the EPA understands it will take utilities – especially ones the size of Wilmington’s – time to identify all its service lines, including pipes on a customer’s property that they are not responsible for maintaining.  The Water Resources Center will continue to work with the City of Wilmington, Wilmington Water, and Jacobs to achieve the inventory goals, and we all hope this partnership serves as a State and national model for other cities and towns.

Results from the initial inventory are available on the Wilmington Water Lead Reduction Program page.  Wilmington will also continue seeking customer assistance in identifying their private service lines and encourages residents to participate in the water service line survey here.

In Partnership with The University of Delaware Water Resources Center, a unit of the Institute for Public Administration in the Biden School of Public Policy & Administration.