I got a letter saying my service line material is unknown. Should I be worried?

Unknown means the utility could not determine the material from its records, not that lead was found. Records from the era when these lines went in are often incomplete, so the unknown category is usually the largest one in any inventory. It does mean somebody needs to look at the pipe, and you can do the first check yourself in a few minutes with a coin and a magnet.

Does a water filter solve a lead problem?

A filter certified to NSF/ANSI Standard 53 for lead reduction will reduce lead at the tap it is fitted to, and it is a reasonable interim step while a replacement is arranged. It is not a substitute for removing the pipe, because it only protects the water passing through that one filter, and only while the cartridge is within its rated life. Treat it as a stopgap rather than a fix.

Is it safe to drink the water while I wait for a replacement?

That is a question for your water utility and for a medical professional rather than for a plumber, and the right answer depends on your household. What public health guidance consistently advises is to use cold water for drinking, cooking and making baby formula, because hot water dissolves lead more readily, to run the tap before drinking if the water has been sitting for hours, and to consider a filter certified for lead reduction. Your utility can tell you what it recommends for your specific address.

I rent. Whose problem is this?

The service line belongs to the property owner, so replacing it is the landlord's decision and expense, not the tenant's. The utility's notification letter normally goes to the account holder and the property owner. If you rent and are concerned, you can still do the visual check yourself, and you can contact the water authority directly to ask what its records show for the address.

Does this affect my house if I am on a private well?

There is no utility service line to a well property, so the inventory letters do not apply. That does not entirely rule out lead, because lead can be present in old interior plumbing, in lead solder used on copper joints in homes plumbed before it was banned, and in older brass fixtures. If your house is old and you are on a well, testing the water is the way to find out, since nobody else is testing it for you.

Homeowner guide

Do I Have Lead Pipes? A Lebanon County Homeowner's Guide to Service Lines

Water authorities across Lebanon County have been writing to customers about service line material. This guide explains what the letter means, how to check your own pipe in about five minutes, and what your options are if it turns out to be lead.

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If a letter arrived from your water authority talking about service line material, you are not alone and you are not being singled out. Utilities across Lebanon County have been sending these because a federal rule required them to.

This guide covers what the letter actually means, how to check your own pipe without hiring anybody, and what your realistic options are if it turns out to be lead or galvanized steel.

Why every water system in the country did this at once

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule Improvements require public water systems to identify what every service line in their system is made of, tell customers what the records show, and replace the lead ones. The EPA’s stated timeline for systems nationally is to identify and replace lead pipes within about ten years, along with a duty to tell people where lead pipes are and when replacement is planned.

Building those inventories meant going back through decades of records, and the records are patchy. That is why so many letters say “unknown” rather than naming a material.

Locally, the City of Lebanon Authority, which supplies Lebanon city and a number of surrounding municipalities, completed its inventory and wrote to affected customers. It has published service line information so that customers can look up their own address. Other systems serving the county have run the same process on their own schedules.

What the letter is telling you

Inventory letters generally sort addresses into a few categories.

Lead. Records show a lead service line. This one is definite and it is the priority for replacement.

Galvanized requiring replacement. Galvanized steel pipe that is or was downstream of a lead line or lead gooseneck. Galvanized pipe can absorb lead into its interior surface and keep releasing it afterwards, which is why it gets grouped with lead rather than treated as safe.

Unknown. The records did not settle it. This is usually the biggest group, and it is not a finding of lead. It means nobody has verified the material yet.

Non-lead. Copper, plastic or another material that does not present a lead concern.

The important thing about the unknown category is that you can often resolve it yourself, today, for free.

Water samples in test tubes being checked with a digital meter at a kitchen sink

Checking your own service line in about five minutes

You need a coin or a key, a strong magnet, and a torch.

Step 1: find where the water comes in. Follow the pipe back from your water meter towards the wall it passes through. In most Lebanon County houses this is in the basement, usually on the wall facing the street. What you want is the section of pipe on the street side of the meter, before any valve, where it emerges from the wall or floor.

Step 2: look at it. Clean off any dust or paint with a rag first so you are looking at the pipe rather than at a coating.

Step 3: scratch it with the coin or key, gently, on a small area.

Step 4: hold the magnet against it.

Now read the result:

What you see	Scratch reveals	Magnet	Most likely material
Dull grey, often with a slightly swollen or bulbous joint	Shiny silver, like a pencil mark on foil	Does not stick	Lead
Grey, sometimes rusty, threaded fittings	Stays dull grey	Sticks firmly	Galvanized steel
Brown or dark orange, like a penny	Bright copper, pinkish	Does not stick	Copper
White, blue, grey or black, feels like plastic	Plastic underneath	Does not stick	Plastic (PEX, PVC or HDPE)

Two details make this more reliable. Lead is soft, so the scratch goes in easily and comes up bright silver, and lead lines often have a distinctive bulged joint where they were wiped into a fitting. Galvanized is the one the magnet sticks to, and that magnet test is the single most useful discriminator, because galvanized and lead can look similar under years of dust.

If the pipe is painted, wrapped, or buried straight into a concrete floor with nothing visible, you may not be able to tell. That is a fair outcome. Report it to your utility as unverified and ask what they advise.

What you have found, and what it means

Plastic or copper. Your service line is not a lead concern. Note that this does not say anything about your interior plumbing, and homes plumbed before lead solder was banned in the mid 1980s can still have lead at the joints of copper pipe.

Galvanized. Worth acting on for two separate reasons. If it was ever fed by lead, it can hold and release lead. Independently of that, galvanized pipe corrodes closed from the inside over decades, which is why houses on original galvanized supply have poor upstairs pressure and discoloured water after sitting.

Lead. This is the case to move on. Tell your water authority what you found, because it improves their inventory and it puts your address in the right category for their replacement programme.

The ownership split, which is the part that costs money

This is the detail that catches people out, so it is worth being precise.

A service line runs from the water main in the street to your house. Ownership splits at the curb stop, the shutoff buried near the curb or sidewalk. The utility owns the run from the main to the curb stop. From the curb stop into the house, the pipe belongs to the property owner.

That means the section under your front yard is very often yours.

Utilities replace their own half under the federal programme. The private half is normally the property owner’s responsibility. Some Pennsylvania water utilities have programmes that cover or contribute to the customer-owned portion, and Pennsylvania does put significant infrastructure money into lead line replacement, but that funding is awarded to water systems rather than paid to homeowners directly. What that adds up to at your address depends on which utility serves you.

So the single most valuable call you can make is to your own water authority, asking two questions: what do your records show for my address, and what does your programme cover on the customer-owned side?

Perforated drain pipe and gravel laid in an open trench beside a house foundation

Who supplies your water

Lebanon County has a number of separate public water systems, and the answer to the question above differs between them. Your water bill names your supplier, which is the reliable way to check. Broadly:

Lebanon city and several surrounding municipalities are supplied by the City of Lebanon Authority.
Myerstown has its own borough water authority.
Much of the western side of the county, including the Palmyra and Annville areas, is served by Pennsylvania American Water.
Rural township properties are frequently on private wells, in which case there is no service line inventory and no utility programme. See our well and water treatment page.

If you are not sure, look at who bills you for water and start there.

Why partial replacement is discouraged

There is a tempting shortcut here: replace the visible bit inside the basement, leave the buried run, save the excavation.

Public health guidance advises against it. Cutting into a lead line disturbs the scale that has built up inside it over decades, and that disturbance can release lead into the water at higher levels than before, sometimes for weeks. A partially replaced line can leave a household worse off in the short term than leaving it alone would have.

The recommended approach is full replacement, both halves, ideally on the same day. In practice that means coordinating with your utility rather than simply booking a plumber, and it is worth asking the utility when their side is scheduled before committing to a date for yours.

Reasonable steps while you wait

Replacement takes scheduling, and in the meantime the usual guidance applies. Use cold water for drinking, cooking and preparing formula, because hot water picks up lead more readily. Run the tap for a while before drinking if the water has been standing for hours. If you use a filter, choose one certified to NSF/ANSI Standard 53 for lead reduction and keep to the cartridge replacement schedule, because an expired cartridge is not doing the job.

Your utility can also tell you whether it offers water testing for customers, and many do.

A three-stage whole-house water filter assembly mounted on a basement wall

Getting the private side replaced

When you are ready to deal with the customer-owned portion, that is ordinary plumbing work, done by a licensed plumber. Our lead service line replacement page covers how the job is done and what the trenchless option depends on.

Tell us your ZIP and what you found on your pipe, and we will come and look at the line.

Sources

This guide draws on the following. Where we could not confirm a figure from a primary source, we have left it out rather than estimate.

This page is general information for homeowners, not legal, medical or engineering advice. For guidance about your specific address, contact your water authority.