Chicago’s Plan to Replace Lead Pipes Puts It 30 Years Behind the Federal Deadline

Banking for now on an outdated EPA rule from the first Trump administration, the city with the most lead service lines in the country doesn’t plan to finish replacing them until 2076.

Growing up in Chicago, Chakena D. Perry knew not to trust the water coming out of her tap.

“It was just one of these unspoken truths within households like mine—low-income, Black households—that there was some sort of distrust with the water,” said Perry, who later learned that Chicago is the city with the most lead service lines in the country. “No one really talked about it, but we never used our tap for just regular drinking.”

Now, as a senior policy advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Perry is part of a coalition that fought for stricter rules to force cities like Chicago to remove their toxic lead pipes faster. Last year, advocates celebrated a big win: The Biden-era U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandated that water systems across the country replace all their lead service lines. Under the new rule, most water systems will have 10 years to complete replacements, while Chicago will likely get just over 20, starting in 2027, when that requirement kicks in.

But the city’s replacement plan, submitted to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in April per state law and obtained through a public records request, puts it 30 years behind that timeline.

Chicago’s plan adheres to state law and an outdated EPA rule from the first Trump administration. It aims to replace the city’s estimated 412,000 lead service lines by 2076—completing 8,300 replacements annually for 50 years, starting in 2027.

The latest federal rule requires Chicago to replace nearly 20,000 pipes per year beginning in 2027—more than double the speed of the city’s current plan. Documents show city officials are aware of the new requirements, but have not yet updated their plans. 

A delayed timeline will expose many more children and adults to the risk of toxic drinking water, and rising temperatures from climate change may exacerbate the risk by causing more lead to leach off pipes and into water. 

For Perry, even 20 more years of lead pipes was a compromise.

“People are already being exposed—they’re being exposed daily,” Perry said. “There is no number [of years] that is satisfactory to me, but 20-ish years is better than 50.”

In recent decades, drinking water crises in Washington, D.C., and Flint, Michigan, put the public health threat of lead on the national map. Lead pipes are a danger across the country, where about 9 million lead service lines need to be replaced to adhere to the new requirements. About a million of those are in Illinois—the most of any state in the country. Among the five U.S. cities estimated to have the most lead pipes—Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit and Milwaukee—only Chicago has yet to adopt the latest federal deadline. The rest plan to replace their lead pipes within a decade of 2027. 

Lead can damage the human brain and nervous system, kidney function and reproductive health, and it’s also an underappreciated cause of cardiovascular problems. 

Lead is particularly harmful to children: It can hamper brain development and cause permanent intellectual disabilities, fatigue, convulsions, comas or even death. Lead exposure during pregnancy can also cause low birth weight or preterm birth. 

Experts emphasize that there is no safe level of lead exposure.

In Illinois, the Metropolitan Planning Council found that people of color are up to twice as likely as white people to live in a community burdened by lead service lines.

Because of a three-year grace period in the 2024 EPA rule—the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, or LCRI—the city does not have to begin complying with the new replacement requirements until 2027. But Chicago’s plan outlines a timeline that starts the very same year and is significantly slower. 

“I’m not sure what Chicago is thinking there,” said Marissa Lieberman-Klein, an Earthjustice attorney focused on lead in drinking water.

Chicago is facing a herculean task. Even with a 50-year timeline, it will have to start moving much faster than its current replacement speed: The city will need to replace more lead service lines annually than the total of 7,923 it managed over the past four years ending in March. Of these replacements, about 60 percent occurred alongside repairs for breaks and leaks or water and sewer main replacements. 

Megan Vidis, a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Water Management, said Chicago is ramping up its replacement speeds. The city will replace 8,000 lines this year, she said. 

“We have been and will continue to move as quickly as resources allow to replace lead service lines,” Vidis wrote in an email. 

Asked about the feasibility of the current EPA rule’s 20-year replacement timeline, Vidis wrote, “We need substantial additional funding, particularly the kind available to help pay for private side replacements.” That refers to the city’s split ownership structure, where homeowners own one part of the line and the city owns the other.

Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for environmental health at the NRDC, said these financial woes are a reason for Chicago to put forward a more ambitious replacement plan. 

Cover photo:  A construction crew completes a lead service line replacement at a Chicago home in June 2023. Credit: Vanessa Bly/NRDC