This story is a partnership between Grist, Inside Climate News, and WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region.
No city dealing with a lot of lead pipes spends as much as Chicago does to replace them.
With more than 400,000 lead water service lines, Chicago has the largest known inventory of lead pipes of any city in the country. Officials say replacing each one costs about $31,000 on average — more than six times the Environmental Protection Agency’s national estimate of $4,700 a line.
Grist, WBEZ, and Inside Climate News surveyed other cities with the most lead service lines in the country — including Detroit, Milwaukee, and New York — about the cost of fully replacing a lead service line. The 18 that responded provided averages between $6,000 and $25,000, with most less than half of Chicago’s figure. Engineering firm CDM Smith, which works with cities across the country, pegs the national average at $12,500 per line.
Now, with a federal mandate to remove every lead pipe within roughly 20 years, Chicago is facing a daunting timeline and an astronomical price tag. Replacing the city’s inventory at the current rate will cost more than $12 billion.
