Service Line Stewardship Program

What is the Service Line Stewardship Program?

The Service Line Stewardship Program (SLSP) is a comprehensive approach to comply with the LCRR and LCRI. The goal is to engage with our customers during every step of the compliance process, providing transparency, trust, and honest answers to your questions. As part of that commitment, we want to first assure our customers that the water provided by Howard County does not contain lead when it leaves the City of Baltimore and Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) water treatment facilities, which provide our drinking water.

The water distributed to our customers consistently remains above state and federal regulatory standards. Importantly, the likelihood of finding lead service lines in our water distribution system is low, since Maryland prohibited lead water pipe construction in 1972.

Customer Notifications

Complying with these updated federal drinking water regulations is an ongoing effort that could affect some customers. The County must send all customers with a service line made from lead, galvanized requiring replacement (GRR), or unknown material an annual notification through the mail. We started sending notifications in 2024, and impacted customers will continue to receive them each year until their service line is confirmed to be non-lead.

Currently, there are no known lead service lines in our distribution system but many are listed as being made from an unknown material and some identified as GRR. Galvanized pipes are made from iron that has been dipped in a protective zinc coating to prevent corrosion, which can capture lead released from upstream lead service lines. The lead can then be released into the home, requiring their replacement and resulting in their categorization as GRR.

An unknown designation means that since your portion of the pipe was not installed by the County, we don’t have a record of the material used for its construction. We need your help in identifying these “unknowns” by taking a short survey and confirming the absence of lead to help complete our inventory. Only customers with unknown service lines on the customer-side are being asked to take the self-reporting survey, which you can access below.  

Service Line Material Inventory & Survey

To view the initial service line material inventory, click on the interactive map link below. Customers can search for their home either by zooming in or by entering the address in the upper left search bar. Service line material is displayed as a split circle, with the left half-circle representing the County or utility-side material, and the right half-circle representing the customer-side material. Please note, if you live in an apartment building or condominium complex and/or otherwise do not directly receive a water bill from the County, there is only one “master” water meter circle representing the current inventory status for the entire building or complex.

If a blue dot shows up, your service line is confirmed to be non-lead and no further action is needed. If a gray dot shows up for the customer side of the service line, you will be directed to take the survey.

Be sure to review the step-by-step instructions and video on how to complete the survey, available in the Resources section. Please note, any survey submissions that do not follow the criteria listed in the instructions may result in your responses not passing the quality control measures instituted by EPA, resulting in the invalidation of your survey.