Chicago Fails To Warn Most Residents About Lead In Water
By Riley Kleemeier
Gazette Introductory Note: This article underlines how impractical it is to believe that that regulation will assure water that’s safe to drink from the tap. In this case, a point of use drinking water filter that removes lead makes a lot more sense than waiting for the city to replace lead pipes.
In Chicago, a federal drinking water rule required officials to notify 900,000 properties that their drinking water is at risk of lead contamination. But as of early July, only 7% of the people on that list had been warned that their water may be putting them at risk for serious health issues.
Of the approximately 490,000 service lines in Chicago, around 412,000 are at least partly made of lead, making the city the most reliant on lead pipes in the nation.Federal law requires water systems to inform residents on a yearly basis about lead pipes until they are completely replaced, but eight months have gone by without any notification.Chicago has attempted to put tools in place to notify residents if their property is likely to have a lead service line, such as an online lookup tool or free lead test kits. But the program is currently backlogged, and some residents have been waiting for months to receive results.
Chicago isn’t the only city tasked with notifying a large number of residents about lead service lines — but other big cities have been able to meet the moment. In Milwaukee, for example, 100,000 notices were sent in a single day, while Chicago is straining to send 3,000 in one week.Replacing lead service lines is no easy task, especially in a city like Chicago that requires hundreds of thousands of replacements — while also requiring permission from homeowners to do so in some cases.The Biden-Harris Administration issued the final rule requiring the replacement of lead pipes within a decade in October of 2024.
Chicago’s current plan puts it 30 years behind that deadline. This delay will prolong the exposure of toxic lead in drinking water to children and adults in Chicago.“We not only need them to step up and catch up really quickly, but we also need the state of Illinois and EPA to use their powers to hold them accountable for this blatant lack of compliance with the law,” Suzanne Novak, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Earthjustice, said of city officials.For now, many Chicago residents will continue to wait on information regarding next steps, and continue to worry about the safety of their drinking water.
