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Is your city replacing its lead lines yet?

The national replacement is really a thousand local programs moving at very different speeds. The gap between the fastest and slowest cities is measured in decades.

By Home Water Report Research Desk · Sources linked below

Cross-section illustration of a city street grid with old pipes running beneath

All figures below are approximate and move constantly — treat them as orders of magnitude, and your utility's own page as the source of truth.

The famous cases

  • Newark, NJ — the proof it can be fast. Newark's program planned to replace roughly 18,000 lead service lines over 24 to 30 months at no cost to homeowners, and later became a national example for fast city-run replacement.
  • Chicago — a massive backlog. Chicago is widely reported as having one of the country's largest lead-service-line inventories. Because local numbers and schedules move, treat the city's own inventory lookup as the source of truth — filter if your line is lead or unknown and get in the queue.
  • Denver — inventory-led and transparent. Denver Water says roughly 60,000 to 64,000 homes may have possible lead service lines, publishes address lookup/work areas, offers free water testing, and replaces customer-owned lead lines at no direct charge when discovered during water-main replacement work.
  • Detroit, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Saint Paul — EPA cites these systems as already started and on pace for ten-year replacement under the LCRI framework. Eligibility and timing still depend on local inventory, block scheduling, and funding.

How to check your own city in five minutes

  • Search "[your utility name] lead service line inventory" or "lead service line map". EPA requires water-system inventories to be publicly accessible, though the format may be a map, lookup tool, PDF, or spreadsheet.
  • On the same site, look for "replacement program": who pays for the private side, and how to sign up.
  • No map, no program? Call and ask the two questions directly — utilities must answer what their inventory says about your address. And read the notice they sent you.

Sources