Silver Creek Water Partners with 120Water: A Proactive Approach to Service Line Inventory
Background
Silver Creek Water serves 7,559 locations across two counties in Southern Indiana. When new LCRR regulations mandated a complete service line inventory by October 2024, many utilities felt overwhelmed. But Silver Creek approached the challenge with a proactive, community-focused mindset. They partnered with 120Water to leverage technology and resident engagement to build a complete and accurate inventory.
The Project
120Water worked collaboratively with Silver Creek to create a tailored inventory game plan. Key elements included
- Initial build of a preliminary inventory from existing utility GIS records and tax parcel data
- Utilization of 120Water resident surveys to fill data gaps, with a 16% response rate
- Custom videos and web resources to educate the community on service line identification
- Agile verification of all resident-reported unknowns
- Ongoing survey follow-up to eliminate remaining unknowns
The Results
By taking a proactive approach and leveraging 120Water's flexible support, Silver Creek has made major strides toward a complete lead service line inventory:
- Preliminary inventory established months ahead of the deadline
- Only 7 unknown system-owned service lines remain across 7,000+ connections
- On track to fully eliminate all unknowns with final resident survey follow-up
- Increased transparency through public-facing inventory resources
By engaging residents and efficiently validating data, Silver Creek continues to exceed inventory goals. 120Water is proud to support its proactive efforts to protect public health and comply with LCRR.
"We have been very diligent in finding the best way to manage the service line inventory verification process. I know the many utilities I’ve spoken with are. extremely far behind. This puts a lot of pressure and frustration on everyone involved with these utilities. I often ask them, 'Why are you so far behind? What do you need to move forward? The deadline will be here before you know it!' I encourage them to have a top-down approach and prioritize their work to be as efficient and effective as possible as I have done by partnering with 120Water. My fear is that if everyone procrastinates, 120Water staff, as well as their own utility staff, will be completely overwhelmed and will “break” the system."
Scott Ham
Silver Creek Water Corperation
