It’s the management
Wednesday, Jul 8, 2026 - Posted by Rich Miller
* WBEZ…
No city dealing with a lot of lead pipes spends as much as Chicago does to replace them.
With more than 400,000 lead water service lines, Chicago has the largest known inventory of lead pipes of any city in the country. Officials say replacing each one costs, on average, about $31,000 — more than six times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s national estimate of $4,700 a line. […]
[Michael Grillo, the Chicago water department’s deputy commissioner] also blamed labor costs in part for the city’s high price tag.
But that explanation doesn’t appear to pan out. The base prevailing wage for a union plumber in the Chicago area is $99.52 an hour. It’s about $97 in Minneapolis and roughly $121 in New York City. Both of those cities replace their lead pipes at less than half of Chicago’s costs.
Go read the rest.
