“Do you know how many people want their yard dug up?” Cheng said. Rules like that are not in place in Chicago. The city of Detroit found success when it pressured residents to let road crews onto private property to remove lead pipes. She said Chicagoans face a bigger threat of poisoning from lead paint and the city is trying to fight that. Only recently did the city start waiving permit fees that can add thousands of dollars to lead replacement costs, she said.Ĭheng said old water mains can rupture, and slowing their replacement by dealing with all the lead pipes would have been irresponsible and could expose people to bacteria. State rules there required expensive construction methods until last year. But Chicago Commissioner of Water Management Andrea Cheng said that's not true in Chicago. The EPA has said replacing lead pipes during water main work is not only safer, it is also about 20% cheaper. The next year, to protect against those spikes, the city finally started handing out water filters to residents in neighborhoods where public works crews were replacing mains. They cited studies that said disturbing lead pipe and then leaving it in the ground can actually spike levels in tap water. Two Chicago residents filed a proposed class action in 2017, arguing Chicago’s water main work increased people's risk of lead exposure. “During the water main replacement program, there was no acknowledgement that there was an issue,” he said.ĭel Toral was not the only one to object to the city's actions. Miguel Del Toral, a former EPA regulations manager who was also a whistleblower on the Flint, Michigan lead pipe disaster, said Chicago ignored the toxic effects of lead in drinking water. Just as the city was wrapping up that effort, the Illinois legislature made that method illegal. Thousands and thousands of times, they reburied the junction and left the rest. When road crews came across the lead pipes that branch off and serve individual homes, they only replaced a short piece near the water main with copper. These are typically made of cast-iron, not lead. In 2012, the city began rapidly replacing its aged water mains. They also say local rules made removal work more difficult and more expensive.
State and local officials say they had limited funds that needed to be used elsewhere. Since Chicago was never forced to remove its lead pipe, it left most of it in the ground, relying on water treatment instead to lower the lead levels. That's because EPA standards only say most homes – not all – can’t have dangerous amounts of lead. Yet that many homes was never enough to trigger the mandate to remove pipes.
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