Residents who can are paying to have their home’s pipework replaced amid concern over water quality but for most the cost is way beyond their means

Chicago residents take action to be rid of lead pipes as fear of toxic water grows

Michael Kerrigan has been a busy man since the full scale of lead contamination in Flint, Michigan, became apparent. Kerrigan’s plumbing business, located a dozen miles north of Chicago’s downtown area, has already removed the lead water pipes of 15 homes this year – the same total as the whole of 2015.

“We are constantly getting calls about it, people are very aware of what’s going on in the news,” Kerrigan says. “People are concerned. It’s usually people with children. Kids are far more affected than adults by lead, so everyone is a bit worried about that.”

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Residents of America’s third largest city have been given disturbing warnings over their potential exposure to lead. According to the EPA, people in Chicago should run their faucets for three minutes to help clear most of the lead out. Water can then be stored in a container in the fridge for use throughout the day. Only cold water should be used for drinking, cooking and preparing baby formula.

This advice, along with the Flint disaster and several uncomfortably high lead readings in Chicago, has sparked a stampede of residents demanding their water tested or lead lines ripped up. Chicago hasn’t quite replicated the crisis engulfing Flint, but the specter of toxic water is starting to haunt the city.



Twenty years ago, Kerrigan tore up the lead pipes leading to his own home in Evanston. “I had young children and although I hadn’t got them tested for lead, I just wanted the pipes gone,” he says.

With an estimated 80% of Chicago’s households connected to water pipes made of lead, Kerrigan would probably be even busier if it weren’t for the price tag. It can cost around $18,000 for the three days of work to replace the entire length of lead service line that runs from a house to the main in the street.

For roughly $10,000, part of the line can be replaced instead. But this cheaper option is highly problematic – the face of a lead pipe cut to join on to a copper pipe is exposed to running water and can make the contamination worse, rather than better. Low-income households are generally priced out of the complete fix.

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Michael Giglio, another plumber who operates from Calumet City, says people in his area aren’t able to afford lead service line replacements. The risk of lead looms large in the poorer neighborhoods.

“It’s truly a question of economics, it’s hard for the homeowner to afford the replacement without any assistance from the government,” he says. “This situation could go from smoke and smoldering to a full-on fire at any time.”

City officials are adamant that Chicago’s water, drawn from Lake Michigan and treated with phosphate to avoid lead contamination, is safe to drink. But the city relies upon lead testing that largely rests upon samples taken from former and current city employees, rather than selected high-risk households, as the Guardian revealed in February.

A city of Chicago spokesman said: “In Chicago the water service line is the responsibility of the property owner. Should the owner decide to change the service line, private issue on private property would require a licensed bonded plumber.

“Once a water main has been replaced, residents receive instructions on how to flush their water lines to eliminate the possibility of lead or any other contaminate from their water system.”

The city has previously said that it has used its own employees for water testing because their “commitment” to the city would provide consistent results.

Even under these conditions, troubling results have emerged. An Environmental Protection Agency investigation in 2011 and 2012 found that lead levels in Chicago were significantly underestimated, with some homes experiencing “high lead levels for years”.



Across Illinois, water authorities have exceeded the federal safe limit on lead at least once a year since 2004. The city of Galesburg, located 150 miles south-west of Chicago, recently received a $4m federal loan to replace thousands of lead service lines after testing found it to have one of the most persistently egregious lead problems in the country.

Elevated lead levels from paint and water have previously been estimated in three-quarters of Chicago’s elementary schoolchildren, posing a risk to the children’s learning, development and according to some studies, even future proclivity to commit crime.

The National Bureau of Economic Research has found a “robust relationship between lead exposure in childhood and violent crimes later in life”. A 2002 study by pioneering lead researcher Herbert Needleman found an association between blood lead levels and a juvenile delinquency.

The famous “Cincinnati Lead Study” followed more than 250 children from birth through young adulthood and found those with increased blood lead levels had higher rates of arrest. Commenting on the research, Harvard professor of neurology David C Bellinger called lead exposure “a national disgrace”.

Burdened by an ageing, potentially harmful, infrastructure, Chicago has responded with hyperactivity. Tom Powers, who resigned as water commissioner in April, oversaw the replacement of 320 miles of water mains and 77 miles of sewers in his five years in the job. But this work has potentially stirred up the lead it has hoped to eliminate.

Construction work to repair pipes or install water meters has dislodged lead that has ended up in the drinking water of “tens of thousands” of Chicago residents, according to a law firm overseeing a class-action lawsuit against the city.

“It has caused a lot of worry, distress and cost,” says Beth Fegan, an attorney at Hagens Berman. “Folks are having to buy bottled water and have filters installed into their homes. A lot of people are using bottled water which is an economic strain for low-income homes and isn’t a long-term fix.

“These people need medical testing to see if they have elevated lead levels and the city should help bear the burden in replacing the lead pipes.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Residents of Chicago’s west side cool off courtesy of the city’s suspect water supply. Photograph: Danita Delimont/Alamy

A city initiative to test residents’ water, predominantly in south and west side neighborhoods that are low-income and largely African American, has proved popular. More than 1,500 Chicagoans have called 311 to get a free water testing kit, up from just 23 in 2015.



But flawed testing practices mean that high lead levels may not be properly picked up anyway, according to Virginia Tech scientist Marc Edwards, who is credited with uncovering the extent of the problems in Flint.

“If I lived in one of the Chicago homes with a lead pipe under no circumstances would l let my child be drinking the water,” said Edwards.

The fear of lead-poisoned children is playing on the mind of Troy Hernandez, a 34-year-old resident of Pilsen, a Chicago suburb that is home to many people of Mexican background and is now gentrifying. Hernandez has taken to knocking on the doors of his neighbors to discuss the threat of lead in water and even held a public lecture with Miguel del Toral, a Chicago resident and EPA whistleblower who warned of the crisis in Flint.

“People have seen how the city cuts corners and how media savvy Rahm [Emanuel, the mayor] is,” Hernandez says. “It seems like the city is playing media games and not actually addressing the issue head on. They are doing the bare minimum.”

Hernandez is pondering the purchase of a house in Pilsen that has a dirt floor, meaning it will be cheaper to carve out the lead water pipe and replace it. He’s planning to start a family and can’t bear the idea of his children imbibing lead-laced water.

“It would be negligent to not replace the pipes now when I have exposed floor,” he says. “I don’t want that to be in the back of my mind for the next 20 years so I’m going to add the cost of it into the loan.

“I expect more and more people will have this issue. And yet it’s not really talked about. I suppose it is somewhat unbelievable that in 2016 in the United States it’s dangerous to drink the water.”