Chicago's Toxic Lead Pipe Problem

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Chicago announces plan to start replacing lead water pipes after decades of denying the dangers

Chicago Tribune

Chicago, the last big American city to require water pipes made of brain-damaging lead, is now the last one beginning to rip toxic pipes out of the ground.

Under plans shared Wednesday with the Chicago Tribune, the Department of Water Management envisions a long and costly effort to protect Chicagoans from a widespread public health threat that remained largely hidden for decades.

Initial work will be modest compared with the scope of the dangers. Next year the city estimates it will replace only 750 of the roughly 400,000 lead service lines connecting homes to street mains, according to slides prepared by the water department.

Yet the new program from Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is the latest example of a shifting mindset at City Hall, where mayors and aldermen resisted changes to Chicago’s plumbing code until Congress outlawed lead water pipes in 1986.

Former city officials — up to and including Mayor Rahm Emanuel — also denied for years that anyone could be harmed just by drawing a glass of water from their household faucet.

“It’s great that Mayor Lightfoot has done what none of her predecessors had the courage to do, which is to acknowledge the problem,” said Miguel del Toral, a retired U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official who played a key role in identifying similar threats in Flint, Michigan, and East Chicago, Indiana.

Chicago by far has more lead service lines than any other city. Detroit, with the second most, has about 125,000.

Ingesting tiny concentrations of the metal can permanently damage the developing brains of children and contribute to heart disease, kidney failure and other health problems later in life. In 2018, researchers estimated more than 400,000 deaths a year in the U.S. are linked to lead exposure.

Like other cities that already are replacing lead service lines, Chicago will rely on federal grants and low-interest loans to finance its work.

Most of the $19 million earmarked for next year will be spent in low-income neighborhoods where children also are endangered by dust from lead-based paint — still the largest source of exposure. The water service line will be replaced in 600 homes with high lead levels, some of which were identified through free testing kits distributed by the city.

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