Chicago has the most lead pipes in the nation. We mapped them all

Summary

This story is a partnership between Grist, Inside Climate News, and WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region. As Gina Ramirez buckled her 11-year-old son into her car last month for their daily drive to school, she handed him a plastic water bottle. “I would love to be able to have him put a cup under the tap if he was thirsty,” Ramirez said. She can’t. Ramirez lives in a home on Chicago’s Southeast Side that’s serviced by a lead water pipe, a toxic relic found in most old homes in the city and many across the country. Exposure to lead can cause serious health harms, including neurological, kidney, and reproductive issues. Infants and young children are particularly susceptible. A longtime activist, Ramirez knows that she and many of her neighbors have lead pipes in a community where residents are already overburdened by toxic pollutants in the air and soil. She also knows Chicago is lagging behind federal requirements to warn residents about their presence, and that the city isn’t planning to finish replacing them until 2076, three decades past a federal deadline. Ramirez doesn’t qualify for the city’s subsidized service line replacement program, but she can’t afford to make the change on her own. For now, she and her family rely on filtering and buying bottled water. Keerti Gopal / Inside Climate News Each day, Ramirez makes the hour-long drive to her son’s year-round therapeutic school in Avondale on the Northwest Side, then heads to her office downtown. As the landscape around her changes from smokestacks and warehouses to shops and restaurants, she suspects lead pipes are another danger that disproportionately impacts her neighborhood and the families who live there. Chicago has the highest number of lead water service lines in the nation, with an estimated 412,000 of about 491,000 lines at least partly made of lead or contaminated with the dangerous metal. For the first time, Grist, Inside Climate News, and WBEZ have analyzed city d...