Should the EPA let Chicago have 40 years to remove lead pipes?

The Biden administration may be touting its plan to replace all lead pipes in the nation in a decade, but an exception in the rule proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would give big cities with the most lead pipes, like Chicago, more than 10 years to fix the problem, possibly decades more.

Officials in Chicago, one of three water systems that the EPA told Route Fifty could be exempted from the 10-year requirement, estimate it will take 40 years to remove all of its 40,000 lead pipes. The exception is drawing criticism from those that say they’ve lived with dangerous lead pipes for too long. 

“Even 10 years is too long. We need to change as soon as it can happen because this is going to impact my generation,” said a city resident during a public hearing last week before the Chicago City Council on the lead pipe problem. 

The woman, who grew up on the city’s South Side, said she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome when she was 12. “This could be a direct cause due to drinking lead water at the age of five,” she said, adding that her sister’s son was also diagnosed with kidney issues in utero. “My sister beats herself up and wonders if it is because she drank tap water during her pregnancy. We can't allow ourselves to keep letting this poison straw impact our lives.”

In its proposal, though the EPA says that it may not be “feasible” for some cities to remove all of them in a decade. The agency announced the requirement earlier this month.

Spokespeople for Cleveland and New York, the two other cities the EPA said could be given more time to replace their lead pipes, did not respond when asked how long it could take. Erik Olson, a senior strategist for the National Resources Defense Council, said Cleveland is estimated to have 185,000 lead pipes. Even if the city can meet the annual goal set by the EPA of removing 10,000 such pipes a year, it would still take an additional eight years or 18 in total to replace them. New York is estimated to have 140,000 lead pipes, so it would take the city about 14 years.

As the EPA works to formalize the new rules, it can expect pushback from environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council that argue the exception is “too loose.”

“We think that’s far too long for people to be drinking lead-contaminated water,” Olson said. “That would mean more future generations would continue to be drinking through a lead straw.”

Yuwa Vosper, policy and regulatory manager for WE ACT for Environmental Justice, adds that if certain places are given more than a decade to remove all their lead pipes then the federal government should do more to protect the residents in those communities. She suggests, for example, that they hand out water filters. 

“What is going to be done to help the people in these cities, especially the more vulnerable populations of children, pregnant women and black and brown communities that have already had systemic disinvestment for years and years? What is going to be done to mitigate that?”

In addition to large cities, the EPA is also proposing to give between 669 and 2,134 smaller water agencies more than a decade. These agencies, which make up 1.3% to 4.3% of all water systems, would not have to meet the 10-year target if they have more than 39 lead pipes for every 1,000 households. Isaac Pellerin, the spokesperson for the consulting firm 120 Water, said it’s too early to know the impact on smaller water systems as they’re in the middle of checking their pipes. The 5,000 systems that the firm works with do not yet know whether or not 70% of their pipes are lead.

Chicago’s Costly Lead Pipe Problem

Lead pipes are a particularly big problem in older cities like Chicago, where most of the homes were built before Congress banned lead pipes in 1986. Pointing to a map during the city council meeting last week that showed where the pipes are, the city’s Commissioner of Water Management Andrea Cheng said, “You can see that that's pretty much everywhere.”

Cheng was joined by water officials from Cincinnati and Newark, New Jersey, at the hearing, where all agreed that the obstacles cities face include a lack of funding, conflicting laws and having trouble getting access to pipes on private property.

In the case of Chicago, Cheng said removing all the lead pipes would cost between $10 billion and $12 billion, and that should the city do it over 10 years, it would cost $1.2 billion annually. 

The EPA in announcing the proposed rule said that the 2021 infrastructure law provides more than $26 billion that can be used to replace lead pipes. But Cheng said that Illinois limits how much of the funding each municipality can receive, and even though Chicago has 39% of the lead pipes in the state, it only received $4 million in principal forgiveness loans last year. 

A spokesperson from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency countered that municipalities can get $4 million each year, but that Chicago has only applied for the funding once. The spokesperson explained that the state’s intention is to “extend the reach of the allotted funds to as many communities as possible.”

The Newark Model

Besides a lack of funding, Cheng said another obstacle to removing lead pipes is state law. “Lead service line replacement requires a lot,” she said. “It's not just going to a house knocking on a door.”

Under state law, for instance, the city has to replace any broken lead pipes with copper ones in 30 days. So instead of being able to address the issue by replacing the lead pipes block by block, “we're hopscotching across the city,” she said. “I have to get those done first. I have 4,000 to 5,000 breaks and leaks a year. I can't stop that. I can't plan for it in terms of knowing where they're going to be.”

Cheng added that the city is also struggling to find workers. The state has a shortage of plumbers, she said, and with few contractors bidding to do the work, the city is having to pick it up.

Cathy Bailey, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Water Works, said at the hearing that her city has had a particularly hard time gaining access to pipes on private property. So much so that the agency is hoping the city council will allow it to shut off water to households that won’t let the city on their property to remove the pipes.

“They don't want us on their property. They don't want us to dig up their yard. They don't want it for various reasons. So it becomes very challenging to try to move the needle and get more people involved even if it's free,” she said. The city had initially paid 40% of the cost to homeowners to replace the pipes before starting to pick up the entire tab in 2021. Despite that, she said, “about 50% of the people still don't want to have the [pipes] removed.”

That’s where Newark stands out. It made headlines in 2011 when it finished replacing all 23,000 lead pipes in two years. But Kareem Adeem, acting director of the city’s Water and Sewer Utilities, said it had to overcome a number of challenges, many of which Chicago and Cincinnati are facing.

One was that 75% of the city’s 315,000 residents are renters and the actual property owners “don't live in the city.” When the city started its effort, the water department had to track down landlords to be able to get access to the property. “We'd find this company sold it to a company in Texas. The Texas company sold it to a company in Nevada. It created a nightmare,” he said.

The city then made it mandatory to replace the lead pipes and passed a law allowing tenants to let them onto the property without their landlord’s permission.

Adeem said the city also created an apprenticeship program to train enough workers to remove the pipes, even providing transportation to get them to training sites outside of the city. Another key thing the city did, he said, was have city departments, including the water and street departments, work together to coordinate removing pipes when streets had to be torn open.

To Olson of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Newark is an example that the 10-year goal is doable.

“Cities give a number of excuses,” he said. “Newark is not a wealthy city at all but they were able to replace thousands of lead pipes.”