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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 speed model. Newark replaced roughly 23,000 lead service lines in about three years, while the archived program page says the city offered lead-service-line replacement at no cost to homeowners.
  • Chicago — the scale problem. Chicago is widely reported as having more than 400,000 lead service lines, one of the country's largest backlogs. Because local records 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