The District will use the new handheld field system to quickly identify unknown water pipe materials that cannot be easily determined without digging and exposing the pipe.
SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Clear River Electric & Water District Board of Utility Commissioners has approved the purchase of Electro Scan Inc.’s award-winning SWORDFISH for the identification of lead water service lines.
Clear River Electric & Water District (CREW) becomes Electro Scan’s first customer in Rhode Island and joins a growing number of U.S. utilities using electrical resistance technology to verify lead service line materials without excavation, including the City of Baltimore, Maryland, and Dallas Water Utilities, Texas.
CREW was awarded a $100,000 Drinking Water State Revolving Fund loan through Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank to support this critical water system improvement project. The loan includes 100% principal forgiveness, effectively acting as a grant which will help improve infrastructure and strengthen the reliability and safety of drinking water in the community.
Electro Scan’s SWORDFISH utilizes patented electrical resistance technology and was described by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development as “the only commercially available technology to locate lead drinking water pipe materials, without digging” during a December 2024 webinar.
The purchase supports Rhode Island’s comprehensive lead service line inventory and replacement requirements while enabling the District to rapidly identify unknown water service line materials without excavation.
SWORDFISH’s physics-based technology automatically identifies copper, galvanized steel, plastic, and lead service line materials along the entire length of the buried service line—often detecting multiple pipe materials within a single service line.
SWORDFISH has been used to inspect more than 24,000 residential water service lines nationwide, including over 9,000 homes inspected by Electro Scan Services for the City of Baltimore, Maryland.
The Clear River Electric & Water District was formed in January 2025 through the merger of the Pascoag Utility District and the Harrisville Fire District Water Department. Today the District serves approximately 2,200 water customers through 33 miles of transmission and distribution mains.
The District is one of 454 public water systems in the state of Rhode Island that is overseen and regulated by the Rhode Island Department of Health Center for Drinking Water Quality, which enforces the Safe Drinking Water Act, including regulations for the Lead and Copper Rule.
In March 2026, the District in association with the Rhode Island Rural Water Association sponsored a workshop titled "Electrical Resistance and Other Methods to Identify Lead Service Line (LSL) Unknowns," presented by Mike App, Executive Vice President, Electro Scan Inc.
“We had heard about SWORDFISH and wanted to hear more,” stated Brian Black, Water Department Superintendent, Clear River Electric & Water District. “Rather than excavating customers’ front yards to inspect only a few inches of pipe, SWORDFISH evaluates the full buried service line.”
The District’s purchase comes as Rhode Island implements one of the nation’s strongest statutory lead service line replacement programs.
Rhode Island now requires public water systems to inventory lead service lines, disclose known or suspected lead service lines during residential real estate transactions, and replace both publicly and privately-owned lead service lines.
Homebuyers are also granted a ten-day inspection period to evaluate a property’s water service line before becoming obligated to complete a purchase.
“Many utilities remain unable to confidently certify service lines as lead-free,” said Mike App, Executive Vice President, Electro Scan Inc.
“Utilities relying solely on predictive modeling, limited potholing, or visual inspections of meter boxes and hose bibs may still be unable to confidently certify that an entire service line is lead-free,” said App.
“Federal regulations require replacement not only of lead pipe, but also galvanized service lines located downstream of lead service lines because accumulated lead particles can remain trapped inside galvanized pipe,” said Chuck Hansen, Chairman and Founder of Electro Scan Inc.
“The challenge begins once lead particles migrate beyond the lead service line and become deposited on downstream copper or plastic plumbing. Independent university research published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution has confirmed that even plastic pipes can accumulate lead transported through a water system. That’s why simply replacing the lead pipe may not eliminate all potential lead exposure risks,” said Hansen.
As of July 17, 2026, the US EPA’s Water Service Line Dashboard reported approximately 22,450,443 unknown service lines from 66,429 reporting water utilities, with preliminary service line inventories due by November 1, 2027.
As utilities transition from predictive inventories to field verification, technologies like SWORDFISH, capable of rapidly confirming actual pipe materials without excavation are expected to play an increasingly important role in Lead and Copper Rule compliance.
Electro Scan’s technologies support measurable FIND–FIX–VERIFY–RECOVER–AUDIT workflows for utilities, industrial water users, engineering firms, and infrastructure owners seeking repeatable, auditable, and defensible water recovery outcomes.
Electro Scan’s platform combines electrical resistance testing, AI-assisted particle tracing, cloud-based analytics, and volumetric water benefit accounting (VWBA) to support infrastructure stewardship, non-revenue water reduction, lead service line identification, rehabilitation validation programs, and auditable water replenishment programs.
Since its founding in 2011, Electro Scan’s physics-based technology has individually identified and measured leaks of nearly 3 million gallons per minute (GPM) or 4.3 billion gallons per day (GPD)—roughly equivalent to 4 times the daily water supply of New York City or about 8-9 times the daily water use of Los Angeles, covering nearly 6,500 miles of pipeline.
ABOUT ELECTRO SCAN INC.
Electro Scan Inc. develops electrical resistance technologies that locate, measure, and quantify defects in buried water and wastewater pipelines, holding over twenty patents. Unlike traditional acoustic, visual, satellite, or predictive approaches that primarily indicate the possibility of leakage, Electro Scan directly measures electrically conductive leak pathways, enabling defect-level hydraulic assessment and quantification in gallons per minute (GPM) or liters per second (LPS) for complete pipe performance-based water accounting.
Founded in 2011 by Chuck Hansen, Electro Scan builds on more than four decades of innovation in water, wastewater, and public infrastructure management through its predecessor organizations Hansen Software and Hansen Information Technologies. For additional information, visit www.electroscan.com.
Contacts
Media Contact:
Janine Mullinix
VP Administration
Electro Scan Inc.
janine@electroscan.com
