SARANAC LAKE — The village wants to replace the 120-year-old water and sewer lines beneath Payeville Lane next year, but to get funding for the nearly million-dollar job, it has to confirm whether a few more of that street’s residents qualify as low to moderate income.

The pipes on Payeville, off Pine Street in Saranac Lake’s northeast corner, are among the oldest in the village.

“To the best of our (knowledge), it is one of the original lines in the village … around 1900,” village Manager John Sweeney said Wednesday.

They are still doing their jobs, too: All day, every day, the cast-iron water pipes still carry clean water into homes, and the clay sewer lines carry wastewater out. Dustin Martin, superintendent of the village Department of Public Works, says that except for one break he’s sure was caused by improper backfilling rather than old age, “In the 16 years I’ve been employed (here), I do not recall being on a water break over there.”

“They haven’t broken, but they’re originals,” Sweeney said. “They don’t meet today’s standards.”

Village officials don’t want to wait until they fail. Equally old lines beneath Academy and St. Bernard streets downtown were replaced in recent years, and contemporary lines on Brandy Brook Avenue are set to be done this summer. Next year is supposed to be Payeville’s turn.

To pay for it, the village has lined up a $920,000 Community Development Block Grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. That amount should be enough to cover the entire project, Sweeney said, although he can’t be sure because the village hasn’t asked contractors to bid on the project yet.

There’s a catch, though. The HUD grant is meant to serve low- to moderate-income people, and to use it for this project, the village has to prove that at least 51% of the households served by those pipes are of low to moderate income. Sweeney said those overseeing the grant have told village officials it could be forfeited without that verification.

And it’s not so easy. It means asking the people who live on Payeville Lane to voluntarily share their financial information. Some have refused, Sweeney said, and others are hard to track down or get answers from. But he said village staff were making headway until the COVID-19 pandemic made them stop knocking on doors. Now, he told the village board Monday, “The hard part is getting the contact information.”

The Payeville water-sewer system includes about 24 residential customers, plus some North Country Community College maintenance buildings, according to Sweeney. As of this week, the village was still three or four households short of the mark on low- to moderate-income confirmation.

“So, three or four people vs. $920,000?” Mayor Clyde Rabideau responded after Sweeney explained the situation at Monday’s meeting. “Shouldn’t we be calling them every 20 or 30 seconds?”

The grant is good until December 2021, which means the project has to be completed by then. Sweeney estimated that gives the village about six more months to verify people’s incomes and do other preparations, and he’s confident that will happen.