Fast Company: We don’t know where all the lead pipes are. BlueConduit’s tool helps find them

Fast Company detailed how BlueConduit’s software helps address pressing questions that cities hoping to replace their lead services lines must confront, highlighting the recently announced Google.org-supported collaboration between BlueConduit, NRDC, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

“When the city of Flint, Michigan, started to replace lead service lines in 2016—two years after mismanagement of the city’s water system caused pipes to corrode and lead in drinking water spiked to dangerous levels—it faced a basic challenge. It didn’t know which homes had lead lines and which didn’t. The same problem exists across the country, where there may be as many as 10 million lead service lines, but no map exists showing their locations.”

Now, as the Biden administration is pushing to remove lead pipes nationally, the team is using a grant from Google.org to build an open-source tool that other cities can use to understand the scope of their lead pipe problem.

BlueConduit

About BlueConduit

BlueConduit pioneered the predictive modeling approach to lead service line identification and replacement. Through BlueConduit data science, utilities, municipalities, government agencies, and consultants standardize, predict, report, and communicate key information about lead.