Jim Thorpe Borough is moving to adopt technology that can identify lead water service lines from inside a home. The detection, officials said, can be done without cutting into sidewalks or digging up pipes.

Borough Council discussed a purchase order Thursday for Swordfish, a probe-based lead line tracing system made by Electro Scan Inc. of Sacramento, California. The order totals more than $15,000, covering $3,000 for cloud service and $12,000 for the initial lead trace analytics data review. Council is expected to vote on the purchase at its next regular meeting on Thursday.

The technology uses electrical resistance measurements to identify the material of buried service lines on a house-by-house basis. An operator runs the device through a service line from inside a resident’s home, and the results are uploaded to a cloud application that uses data modeling to determine whether lines are made of lead or other materials.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection has approved Swordfish for use in inventorying lead service lines, eliminating the previous requirement to dig up or expose pipes to confirm their composition.

Water Supervisor Dwayne Sterner said the alternative, physical excavation, would be far more disruptive and expensive.

“They’ll actually go into the residents’ home and run this out and determine what it is,” Sterner said. “It’s going to save us from the headache of coring holes in people’s sidewalks, because the rule is 18 inches each side of the curb stop. It’s about 80% of our curb stops, we would be having to dig through somebody’s sidewalk.”

Council President Connor Rodgers noted the financial stakes on both sides.

“Even though this isn’t cheap, it’s definitely going to be cheaper than tearing up sidewalks and spending our time completing this.”

Sterner echoed that concern, pointing to the liability questions excavation would raise.

“My biggest fear is if we have to take up sidewalks, who’s responsible for the sidewalk?” he said.

Federal rules require public water systems to inventory all lead and copper service lines. Sterner said the Swordfish work represents the first of three phases. The borough’s lead and copper plan is expected to be finalized by the end of the year, with a full inventory plan then submitted to DEP. Lines that have not been identified through records and past digging must be accounted for in that plan.

Electro Scan has also offered to schedule a demonstration of the equipment for council and staff. The company and DEP require that operators complete a two-day manufacturer training course before using the device independently.