United World College-USA Selects Electro Scan Services to Inspect Campus Water Lines for Lead Pipe Materials
Electro Scan Services will use SWORDFISH to inspect water service lines serving 44 academic, residential,
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United World College-USA, located in Montezuma, New Mexico, has signed an agreement with Electro Scan Inc. for Electro Scan Services to inspect water service lines serving buildings throughout its campus and the neighboring properties served by its water system, using the company’s award-winning SWORDFISH technology.
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United World College-USA’s historic campus in Montezuma, New Mexico. Electro Scan Services is scheduled to inspect water service lines serving campus buildings in August 2026.
Fieldwork is expected to be completed in August 2026 and will include approximately 44 academic, residential, administrative, utility, recreational, and historic campus buildings and locations.
Electro Scan Services will perform the inspections and provide UWC-USA with documented findings identifying the pipe materials serving each inspected building.
Electro Scan’s SWORDFISH utilizes patented electrical resistance technology and has been 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.
SWORDFISH’s physics-based technology automatically identifies copper, galvanized steel, plastic, and lead pipe materials along the buried water service line. The technology can also identify multiple pipe materials within a single service connection without excavating lawns, roadways, sidewalks, or landscaped areas.
The inspection program will include prominent UWC-USA facilities such as the Davis International Center, known as Montezuma Castle; the Old Stone Hotel; the Zeinal-Zade Science Center; the Geier Center for Technology and Languages; Kluge Auditorium; the Dwan Light Sanctuary; Anixter-Poole Hall; Lansing Field House; student residences; as well as faculty and neighboring housing.
United World College-USA is an international boarding school that brings together students from more than 90 countries to complete the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program while advancing UWC’s mission of making education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.
The historic campus is located in the foothills of northern New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Its Davis International Center, originally constructed in 1886 as a resort hotel and commonly known as Montezuma Castle, serves as a center of student life.
“Our team has identified the campus buildings to be evaluated and photographed their water connection points so Electro Scan Services can complete the inspections as efficiently as possible,” said Bob Nash, Senior Director of Operations and Safety at United World College-USA.
“Inspecting the buried service lines without unnecessary excavation will provide valuable information about the water pipe materials connecting academic buildings, residences, and historic facilities to our water system. The mapping and identification of materials in this portion of our water infrastructure will allow the school to more sustainably and safely manage this important resource for our campus community.”
The project comes as water systems, schools, property owners, and other institutions throughout New Mexico work to identify unknown water service line materials under the U.S. EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule requirements.
New Mexico has approximately 327,550 water service lines classified as unknown out of approximately 533,269 total service lines reported by 684 community water systems. As a result, approximately 61% of New Mexico’s reported service lines have not yet been positively identified by pipe material.
“UWC-USA is taking a proactive and responsible approach by verifying the actual pipe materials serving its campus rather than relying solely on historical records, visual assumptions, or predictive modeling,” said Mike App, Executive Vice President of Electro Scan Inc. “SWORDFISH allows our field services team to evaluate buried water lines without disruptive excavation and deliver documented, building-specific results.”
U.S. EPA regulations require water systems to inventory service line materials and classify lines as lead, galvanized requiring replacement, non-lead, or lead-status unknown. EPA has emphasized that developing an accurate service line inventory is the first step toward locating and replacing lead service lines and protecting public health.
“Schools and residential campuses need reliable information about the water lines serving the buildings where students, faculty, and staff live and work,” said Chuck Hansen, Chairman and Founder of Electro Scan Inc. “This project demonstrates how an institution can move from unknown or incomplete records to direct field verification without excavating historic grounds or disrupting normal campus operations.”
SWORDFISH has been used to inspect more than 20,000 residential and institutional water service lines nationwide, including more than 5,000 homes inspected by Electro Scan Services for the City of Baltimore, Maryland.
Electro Scan’s technologies support measurable FIND–FIX–VERIFY–RECOVER–AUDIT workflows for utilities, schools, universities, industrial water users, engineering firms, and infrastructure owners seeking repeatable, auditable, and defensible infrastructure information.
The company’s platform combines electrical resistance testing, AI-assisted particle tracing, cloud-based analytics, and volumetric water benefit accounting to support lead service line identification, infrastructure stewardship, non-revenue water reduction, rehabilitation validation, and auditable water-replenishment programs.
ABOUT UNITED WORLD COLLEGE-USA
United World College-USA is an international boarding school located in Montezuma, New Mexico. UWC-USA brings together students from more than 90 countries to complete the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program in a diverse residential community dedicated to international understanding, sustainability, service, and peace. UWC-USA is part of the global United World Colleges movement. Its mission is to make education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. For additional information, visit www.uwc-usa.org.
ABOUT ELECTRO SCAN INC.
Electro Scan Inc. develops electrical resistance technologies that locate, identify, measure, and quantify conditions in buried water and wastewater pipelines and holds more than twenty patents.
Unlike traditional acoustic, visual, satellite, or predictive approaches that primarily indicate the possibility of leakage or estimate pipe materials, Electro Scan directly measures electrical properties to identify buried service-line materials and electrically conductive leak pathways. Its technologies enable pipe-material verification and defect-level hydraulic assessment, including quantification in gallons per minute or liters per second 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.
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