BY ADAM ATKINSONNorth Country This Week

POTSDAM -- Lead survey teams from the firm ElectroScan have been put on notice that they need to improve their communication with residents regarding keeping appointments to survey and inventory lateral service lines supplying water to homes and businesses.

David Powers from Barton & Loguidice, the head firm on the project to survey the village's 1400 lateral water service lines for lead, told village board members at their meeting Monday, Sept. 23, that he had reached out to Mike App, ElectroScan VP of business development, regarding the concerns.

ElectroScan is the subcontractor, working under B&L, supplying the electrolysis technology and tech teams to conduct the actual surveying onsite at residences and businesses.  

Village officials had told Powers at their meeting last month that many residents had complained that appointments set with ElectroScan were canceled last minute and that the firm had been difficult to nail down on reschedules.

Pierrepont Avenue resident Matthew Manierre told North Country This Week separately that the firm had dropped the ball multiple times in their attempts to get his service lines surveyed. Manierre told NCTW that "not only is ElectroScan failing to show up very often, but they are frequently incapable of doing the work when they do show up."

At the meeting, Powers told board members that he had raised the concerns voiced by Manierre and other residents and those voiced by village officials to ElectroScan.

"We got into quite a number of things," Powers said. He said notably he and App discussed the "no-call-no-shows" that were apparently caused by a COVID outbreak among the inspection team, but still have raised the ire of village residents.

Currently the village has had low residential compliance for getting the service line survey and inspections done under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deadline. Municipalities need to have an inventory log of all water service lines entered into a database by the middle of October and identify sections containing lead. Sections containing lead can then be removed by the village over the next decade as required by the EPA. Cost of the inspection is 100 percent covered thanks to a million dollar grant received by the village. There is no cost to residents.

But, so far there are still hundreds of inspections in the village to be done.

Powers said B&G also emphasized to ElectroScan that their call-in number was not user friendly and often busy when residents reach out to set up their appointment.

"I brought that up to them previously and said it was not a very user friendly system, and apparently it was overlooked. I brought it up again and he said it would be changed immediately," Powers told the board.

Powers said he also has requested full access to ElectroScan's scheduling software so he can review it. He also requested regular copies of the firm's inspection logs weekly.

Furthermore, Powers said ElectroScan's project manager for the Potsdam inspection has been removed and a new supervisor and two additional techs have been assigned to the project. App will apparently be taking over project management duties.

"Ultimately the take away from our meeting is that obviously, communication is first and foremost," Powers said.

"We were really impressed upon (ElectroScan) that to date things have been rocky. They've been poorly executed and quite frankly, we're very disappointed, the village is disappointed and confidence has been shaken to the point where there's not really room for a lot of missteps remaining at this point," Powers said.