City of Plano, TX Inventories 81,000+ Water Service Lines to Meet LCRR Requirements and Inform Residents

The Challenge

One of the most challenging requirements of the LCRR is water systems need to create a full inventory of all their service lines, on both the public and private side. A service line is a smaller water line that delivers water from the City main water line to the home or business. In Plano, the public-side is from the water main to the water meter and the private-side is from the water meter to the home or business.

To put this inventory requirement in perspective, even a small water system could easily have tens of thousands of service lines. Plano has more than 81,000.

The service line inventory must contain not only information about whether the line is made of lead or copper but many other data points, including the age of the line, the precise location, and the address for the line.

But how do you go about tackling such a massive project? Using a spreadsheet quickly becomes cumbersome. Plus, it won’t help you understand the locations of all your lead service lines in a way that best supports the work to replace them, which is one of the main goals of creating the inventory.

The Solution

To tackle this problem, the City of Plano turned to OpenGov Cartegraph Asset Management, a software system it uses for tracking assets and managing work orders tied to asset maintenance. With an integration to Esri’s ArcGIS, it allows all of its users to lay GIS data over asset data, creating layers with vital information to inform asset management work.

The effort was spearheaded by the Public Works Asset Management Team for the City of Plano. To create the inventory, with assistance from Technology Solutions/GIS department, line features were added using water meter locations and the water main closest in proximity to represent the water service line at each address. The goal was to build an inventory that could be easily visualized and to provide accurate location information for the lines, along with other information important for maintenance.

The Results

Using Esri’s ArcGIS integration with OpenGov Cartegraph Asset Management, the team successfully created an inventory of over 81,000 water service lines in the City of Plano water system and pushed the needed data to the software to be used by Public Works personnel.

“OpenGov Cartegraph Asset Management and the ArcGIS integration were crucial in our work to create a lead service line inventory. It lets us track historical records and repairs. It gives us information that allows us to go out and see trouble spots and how they correlate with the rest of our system. It’s a game changer.”

Brendon Lockette, Asset Management Coordinator, City of Plano, TX

To begin populating the public-side service line material for the inventory, the Asset Management Team drew from historical records and as-built drawings. The desktop analysis was the first step to narrowing the number of service lines where the material type was unknown so field crews didn’t have to inspect every location. To populate the material type, three data sources were used:

Ordinance/Regulation Verification

Adopted laws at both the federal and local level mandated various changes to service lines. July 1, 1988 is when the City of Plano’s codes banned lead pipes.

As-Built Drawing Verification

Using a map made with data from Esri’s ArcGIS, as-built drawings associated with water main installation, which included notes about the material used in the service lines, helped identify the material of large areas of water service lines. A bulk editing feature in OpenGov’s software allowed multiple records to be updated simultaneously, making for an efficient way to input material data for water service service lines.

Historical Task Verification

Historical documentation of repair work, replacements and materials was also linked to specific service lines and added to the inventory. Once the data was connected to specific lines in the inventory, it was reviewed to identify the material used for the affected line.

After reviewing these records, the City was able to identify over 92% of public service lines and 50% of private-side service lines were non-lead. This meant significantly fewer locations will have to be field verified by crews. During field verification, a crew visually inspects each service line at the water meter to see what it’s made of. Field verification is required when you don’t have sufficient data to determine whether the water service line contains lead or not.

Using the inventory and associated data, Plano developed a public-facing map for property owners to see the material of the public and private water service line at their address. The City’s goal is to have 100% of the service line material identified by October 2024 and hopefully demonstrate all services are non-lead.