18990_Authority_Feb_2026

By Matthew Junker, Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County While all drinking water utilities have had to inform their bill paying customers and users about service line inventory records, there has been a wide variance in how utilities have gone about it. Referred to as 30-day mailers, each utility subject to the revised Lead and Copper Rule (LCRR), had to contact customers 30 days following the compliance date of Oct. 15, 2024. Since then, another 30-day mailer deadline has passed, meaning a second mailing has occurred. The EPA stated in its preamble to the LCRR that they wanted to prompt a conversation between utilities and the public about lead. As a mandated communication, we could have performed a box-checking compliance exercise, similar to the jargon- filled Consumer Confidence Reports that have such poor readership across many U.S. water utilities. Instead, we wanted to make ours memorable, for positive reasons I will describe below. At the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC), part of the decision I presented to management was whether we could allude to potential financial support for Lead Service Line Replacement (LSLR), without knowing the status of our future funding. While Act 44 of 2017 allows Pennsylvania municipal authority boards to vote to use public funds for service line or lateral replacement, past precedent has skewed toward uniform rates, and respecting the ban against paying for improvements to private property. So, while we ultimately decided to say we would offer assistance in the mailers, we never really had to debate that they should get people’s attention. The design process was started with a survey of other utility’s work in this area. DC Water presented at an ASDWA webinar about a postcard campaign they conducted to solicit service line photos. We ended up using that in a door hanger, where we would also call ahead to increase response rates. In addition to incorporating some of that, Louisville Water’s VP Kelley Dearing Smith shared her mailers with MAWC, and we ended up using a similar cover image for the unknown mailer. Even with those ideas in hand, there was a significant amount of work remaining to design the galvanized and lead mailers. Eventually, MAWC management agreed that we would state on the lead and galvanized mailers that we would assist in their replacement in some way, even if the details remain to be worked out. Since that time, MAWC has received a $10 million grant/loan award from PennVest for eight communities in northern Westmoreland and southern Armstrong counties. In that project area, we are offering replacement for $3,200 per customer, even though the amount anticipated to be spent on private side replacement is anticipated to be $5,000 or more. I nforming the public need not be dull , and there ’ s incentive to make it memorable ; A bout MAWC’ s LCRR 30- day mailers