Youngstown council and department heads met Wednesday to discuss the status of lead pipe removal in the city.

"In our distribution system we have 11,700 lead services," Harry Johnson III, Youngstown water commissioner said. "To date, we've eliminated about 5 percent of those. What we've been doing is trying to utilize the federal funding that's out there that's available for us," he said.

That includes a $500,000 grant awarded to the city by the Ohio EPA's Drinking Water Assistance Fund Program and an effort to obtain approval from council to submit an application for a $13 million dollar water supply revolving loan.

"As of right now, those proceeds expire in 2027 and the federal government has a 50 percent principal forgiveness so of course we want to take advantage of those opportunities for the city so we can do a lot with those proceeds," Johnson said.

Several projects will take place this year to help get rid of the lead pipes, one was just finished on Mahoning Avenue, the Crandall park water main and lead service replacement project is up next and the Buckeye Plat Project is ongoing.

"So the Buckeye Plat is currently in progress right now. It's an active project and we're going to eliminate somewhere in the neighborhood of about 700 lead services as a result of that project," Johnson said.

Johnson adds, a survey of Youngstown residents helped them to get a good idea of how many lead pipes are out there and where, but there's still some they're unaware of.

Council was supposed to vote on whether or not to approve the acceptance of that half a million dollar grant, authorization to advertise for bids and enter into a contact for the Crandall Park project and to grant permission to apply for the $13 million dollar loan, but there weren't enough council members present to make the call. There were five councilpersons in attendance, six are required to pass ordinances.

These matters and others will have to go for a second reading instead.

Johnson said each project will eliminate 600 to 700 lead pipes and that they're on schedule. All the pipes are supposed to be removed by 2037.