Doctor Michael Reisner, director of Augustana's Upper Mississippi Center for Sustainable Communities, says students will help the city comply with a recent law.
"It requires the replacement of the entire lead service line pipe. That means the utility-owned part and the property owner part. Historically, just the utility-owned part has been replaced, Illinois law requires both be replaced."
Rock Island has about 15,000 water service lines, and about 12,000 of them are older than 1986 - that's when lead service lines were outlawed.
And because there are so many lines and they can't inspect each one, Reisner they'll have to make educated guesses as to how many lead lines there are in the city.
"Okay, we know the neighborhood had these characteristics and this is what we found. We had similar blocks in the city so it's probably fairly likely that we have some lead service lines there."
He says faculty and students from several departments will be involved during the next two years, including public health, geographical information science, and even history, to help Rock Island come up with an inventory.
The Illinois law says once an inventory is completed, cities have two years to put together a replacement plan, and then up to 20 years to replace any lead lines.
