The tragedies that unfolded in the Michigan cities of Flint and Benton Harbor should serve as a wake-up call for Chicago to replace the over 400,000 lead service lines that bring drinking water to homes every day. If Chicago continues at its current pace, it’ll take us over 600 years to get those lead pipes out of the ground. We can’t afford to have one more generation of Chicagoans threatened by toxic lead in their drinking water.
These service lines deliver water to our homes, child care facilities and parks. They also have the potential to cause serious health problems. Despite the banning of lead additives in paint and gasoline in the 1970s, millions of lead pipes still lie underground in all 50 states, including right here in Illinois. In fact, Illinois has more lead service lines than any state in the country.
Currently, as many as 400,000 homes in Chicago have water delivered through lead pipes in the ground — largely because Chicago mandated the use of lead pipes until 1986 when they were banned by federal law. If consumed, lead can interfere with a developing brain, resulting in irreversible brain damage, learning disabilities, behavioral problems and more, making it especially dangerous for children and pregnant women.
And we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to right this decadeslong wrong with the passage of the federal Build Back Better Agenda, scheduled for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this month. It also has the potential to create tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs, including licensed plumbers, throughout Illinois.
The Illinois plumbing license is key to providing peace of mind in this process — the union women and men working on your water systems are professionals who have thousands of hours of instruction in state-of-the-art training centers and on the job before they become journey workers. This training and expertise allows union plumbers to provide the highest quality craftsmanship.
Passage of this bill will also significantly benefit Chicago’s Black and brown communities. A 2020 study from E2, or Environmental Entrepreneurs, showed that Black and Latino residents in Illinois are twice as likely to live in communities with the most lead service lines — yet another addition to the array of disproportionate threats to their health and livelihoods.
We’ve known about the dangers of lead pipes for years, but cost can prohibit many communities and states from replacing them with safer alternatives such as copper. We desperately need to replace these pipes so we can protect our children, expectant mothers and all vulnerable populations from the possibility of drinking toxic water.
That’s why we were glad to see Gov. J.B. Pritzker sign legislation last month that makes Illinois only the third state in the nation to mandate the full replacement of all lead service lines in the state. While this commitment is an important step toward protecting families in our state who are currently drinking unsafe water, such a massive undertaking won’t be possible without the necessary resources to fund this crucial project.
President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda will give us the funds we need to replace these pipes and protect our health. While the bipartisan infrastructure bill included $15 billion for lead service line replacement, $30 billion in additional funding is necessary to replace 100% of the lead pipe and service lines in the country.
The House version of the Build Back Better Act would provide the full $45 billion, but more work is necessary to ensure the Senate version includes the same promise. With these funds, we can modernize the nation’s drinking water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure and keep our families safe, all at no cost to homeowners.
A recent study by the Metropolitan Planning Council in Illinois found that replacing all of the state’s lead service lines alone could create up to 224,500 jobs and $23 billion in economic activity. And Illinois voters overwhelmingly support proposals to remove and replace lead pipes given the high risk that lead service lines pose.
This is not a time for partisanship. It’s a time to unify around the health and well-being of our children and future generations in every state of this nation. It’s an opportunity to invest in both our economy and our highly skilled and licensed union members charged with doing the work. Let’s get this done and make sure no more Chicagoans are harmed by this invisible threat.
Jeremy Orr is a senior attorney for the Safe Water Initiative at the Natural Resources Defense Council. James Coyne is the business manager for the Plumbers Local 130 UA.
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