City officials are finalizing a plan to replace the lead service lines responsible for contaminating the tap water in thousands of Chicago homes, Department of Water Management Commissioner Randy Conner told alderman on Tuesday.
The replacements will cost between $8 billion and $10 billion to replace the lines that connect approximately 400,000 Chicago homes with water mains buried under Chicago streets. The metal can leach a brain-damaging chemical into drinking water.
City officials will need help from the state and federal governments to foot the bill, WTTW reports. The city currently has $5 million set aside for a pilot program. It could cost between $3,000 and $10,000 to replace each home’s lead service lines, based on estimates from other cities.
May Lori Lightfood ordered the installation of water meters in Chicago homes to stop in July 2019 after city officials found elevated levels of lead in more than one in five metered homes they tested. Data gathered as part of a study of 510 Chicago homes in 2019 found that 22 percent of residences with new water meters had elevated levels of lead, the mayor’s office announced. Of those homes, 7.1 percent had lead levels above the 15 parts per billion action level set by the EPA, officials said.
