AURORA | The city’s water department this spring is launching a pilot program to identify and replace pipes that may contain lead in more than 100 north Aurora homes, Marshall Brown, executive director of Aurora Water, announced at a recent city council study session.

Lead in Aurora drinking water, even in older parts of the city, has not been an issue to date, according to city records.

Throughout the summer, the city will be contracting with plumbers and inspectors to analyze a portion of the water service lines in as many as 117 north Aurora homes to determine if the pipes contain or leach lead, Brown said.

The decision to start the program mirrors similar moves taken by several large American cities, including Boston, Chicago and Lansing, Michigan, to update their utilities following the catastrophic levels of lead found in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan three years ago.

“What happened in Flint has an impact on all utilities,” said Greg Baker, spokesman for Aurora Water. “It’s had a ripple effect across the nation — you can look at Chicago, Lansing, Boston … just about every locality is taking a good look at their system.”

Baker added water officials are pre-empting harsher federal and state restrictions they expect to see passed on municipal water sources in the coming years.

Aurora Water officials have identified more than 3,000 homes in the original Aurora neighborhood — many of which are a few blocks off of East Colfax Avenue — that could have service lines at least partially made of lead. In Colorado, most cities own the half of a home’s service line that runs to the water main, while resident’s own the half that runs from the customer’s meter to the house.

However, Baker said only 117 Aurora homes have been identified for the new pilot program through the city’s annual lead and copper testing program. Following the recent passage of more stringent state regulations on water, the city now conducts annual tests on a crop of 54 homes that have been flagged for potentially having lead pipes. That pool of potential test subjects currently sits at 117 homes — the same pool that will be used for the lead identification and replacement pilot program, according to Baker.

He said the city completed its last batch of lead and copper testing without finding any noticeable levels of dangerous elements last summer.

Residents become eligible for the voluntary lead and copper testing program by either volunteering their home — often after being advised by a plumber they may have toxic pipes — being advised by city maintenance crews that a lead line may be near their home or, in rare cases, perusing architectural documents that may have a note regarding what material was used during construction, according to Baker.

He said homes built before 1961 are the most at-risk for having lead pipes. After that year, the market shifted and builders quickly began using different materials, like copper. But he said poor record keeping has resulted in lingering questions regarding the contents of the pipes in many of the city’s older homes.

Baker said one of the primary goals of the new program is to determine what percentage of the 117 identified homes could actually have lead service lines.

“We have no idea what that percentage is,” he said. “We need some sort of baseline metric to determine what we’re attacking.”

Common in homes built in the 1940s and ‘50s, lead fixtures and solder were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1987. However, it took several years for the regulations to have a true effect on the market as some lead fixtures were used through the 1990s, according to Baker. Although not officially mandated, the EPA recommends keeping lead levels below 15 parts per billion. In recent years in Flint, researchers have found samples of water with lead contamination as high as 13,000 parts per billion, The Washington Post reported in 2016.

Aurora’s raw water does not contain more than 1 part per billion of lead, according to the city’s website. Brown said the only way lead can get into a home’s water is from old lead service lines leaching the element into the supply.

But even if a home does have lead service lines, that does not mean the toxic substance will come out of the tap, Brown said. Through certain treatment mechanisms enacted by the city’s water department, a protective film forms over those lead service lines, preventing the element from getting into the water.

“There’s not a risk today, but we want to eliminate the potential for that risk in the future,” Brown said of potential homes with lead service lines.

The new pilot program will start with a free inspection of a home’s service lines, according to Baker. If a home is found to have lead pipes, the city will offer a certified contractor to swap them out. In this pilot stage, Aurora Water has pledged to offer a rebate for half of the cost of any replacements. On top of that, qualifying low-income residents — people earning no more than 60 percent of the median income according to federal poverty index — are eligible to have the city front the cost for the entire procedure.

More than 80 percent of the 117 homes are expected to qualify for the low-income rebate, according to city documents.

The city will also offer a $1,000 rebate to homeowners who elect to swap out their service lines using their own contractor — not the certified professional vetted by the city.

Baker estimated a wholesale replacement of a home’s service line would cost between $6,000 and $8,000.

Aurora Water has budgeted $1 million of its roughly $138 million annual budget for the new pilot program.

Currently, the pilot program is only available to homeowners, according to Brown. But, he said about 83 of the 117 identified homes are believed to be owner-occupied.

If the new pilot program goes well, Baker said the city could extend the program to thousands of more homes in north Aurora.