Chicago gets – Federal funding approved this week will help Chicago replace about 650 lead service lines in the Austin neighborhood, a step tied to health risks that have persisted for years in a city and state with some of the nation’s highest concentrations of lead pipes.
When residents in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood turn on the tap, the water isn’t supposed to carry a hidden public-health risk. But a large share of homes there has tested above the lead threshold tied to action—prompting new federal money aimed at tearing out lead service lines.
Chicago’s Department of Water Management will receive more than $22 million in federal funding to replace lead pipes in the Austin neighborhood. U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin announced Wednesday that the city was awarded a $22. 119. 933 grant to support approximately 650 lead service line replacements.
Durbin said the stakes are immediate for families. “Lead in our drinking water. at any level. is a threat to our public health. particularly to children. ” he said in a statement. He added that Chicago has “the most” lead pipes of any city in the nation. and that those lead pipes “have posed a health risk for far too long.” With the grant. he said. the city can keep working toward “ensuring Chicagoans have access to clean water when they turn on the tap.”.
Duckworth’s office said more than 3. 000 properties in the neighborhood have tested above the current lead action limit of 15 parts per billion. Duckworth said the grant will ensure families and children have access to safer. cleaner drinking water and will protect communities from health risks tied to lead exposure.
The announcement arrives only weeks after Duckworth and Durbin said they had secured more than $316 million in federal funding for clean water projects across Illinois. That total included $295,551,000 for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and $21,335,000 through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Emerging Contaminants in Small or Disadvantaged Communities grant program. aimed at helping communities address PFAS and other emerging contaminants.
Illinois, as a whole, has the highest concentration of lead pipes in the country. The state estimates it has 667,000 known lead service lines and another 820,000 suspected lines. Chicago alone accounts for nearly 30% of those pipes.
Cost is part of why the problem has taken so long to shrink. In a 2022 report. the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency found that replacing a single service line can cost anywhere from $4. 000 to $13. 000 across the state. In Chicago, city officials estimated that replacements cost more than $30,000 per line on average.
State officials have estimated that replacing all the known or suspected lead pipes across Illinois could cost between $6 billion and $10 billion.
The timing of the Austin work still wasn’t clear. It was not immediately clear when the work would begin.
Chicago Austin neighborhood lead pipes lead service lines federal grant Tammy Duckworth Dick Durbin Department of Water Management drinking water Illinois lead pipes PFAS