Explanation
BACKGROUND: This ordinance authorizes the Director of Public Utilities, on behalf of the Division of Water, to enter into an annual cooperative agreement with Columbus Public Health to provide funding for the Healthy Homes Program. The Healthy Homes Program within Columbus Public Health seeks to help residents with lead poisoning prevention programs, hazardous product storage, indoor air quality, and related issues with the intent of creating a safer and healthier home environment.
In 1991, the EPA enacted the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The LCR requires tap water testing. For the past fifteen (15) years, the Columbus Division of Water and Columbus Public Health partnered in a national pilot program to help eliminate lead exposure in homes. That program expired in 2015. However, both the Division of Water and Columbus Public Health desire to continue the program as a matter of public health. The goals of the program are for the Health Department to provide risk assessment services in reported cases of excessive levels of lead in children under six (6) years of age via confirmed laboratory testing, and provide educational and preventive lead exposure services in the community.
The risk assessments include residential water sampling to determine the extent, if any, of whether or not drinking water from the home is a source of lead exposure. Details of the services to be provided by Columbus Public Health are contained in an agreement (memorandum of understanding) dated November 24, 2015. The Division of Water has contributed $300,000.00 per year to this program since 2001. Revisions to the agreement will be evaluated again in 2020.
FISCAL IMPACT: This is an annual expenditure and the Division of Water has allocated $300,000.00 for this project in the 2016 operating budget.
$ 300,000.00 was spent for this project in 2014.
$ 300,000.00 was spent for this project in 2015.
Title
To authorize the D...
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