Climate progress, every week

👋 Hi, everybody! On this holiday week, we are once again coming to your inboxes a bit early, and with a short but sweet newsletter. (I am out on vacation — sending this to you from the beyond! — but I didn’t wanna miss an opportunity to share a supercool Grist project with you.) Today, we’re taking a look at a Grist series that has unfolded over the past year, documenting the complex, ongoing problem of lead pipes in Chicago. 

But wait, you might say, I thought this newsletter was supposed to be about solutions, not problems! Well, if you’ll allow me to get a little bit meta here — this is one of those instances where I believe journalism becomes a solution in and of itself, holding power to account and equipping people with information they need to protect themselves today while continuing to fight for a better future. 

I hope it resonates with you, and that you are also getting some time to rest and restore this holiday weekend. On that note, we’re skipping our regular news link roundup — but I’ve got a drabble for you, and a water-related prompt I think you’ll really dig. 

This post originally appeared in Grist’s weekly solutions newsletter, Looking Forward. Not on our list yet? Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

A year of stories on Chicago’s lead pipes

Vanessa Bly / NRDC

Chicago has more lead pipes than any other city in the country. “This has been a longtime problem that people have written about, talked about, reported about,” my colleague Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco told me. As a local reporter for Grist and WBEZ in Chicago, he was very familiar with the issue of lead contamination in tap water — which affects some 9.2 million households in the U.S., with Chicago bearing the highest burden. 

Lead is a powerful neurotoxin that can damage the brain and nervous system, and is especially dangerous to children and pregnant people. No level of exposure is considered safe. But many Chicago residents still aren’t aware that they could be affected and don’t know what steps to take to protect themselves.

So when Juanpablo learned, in 2024, about a law going into effect that required water utilities to turn in lead service line inventories to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and an Illinois law that required annual updates and replacement plans, he set himself a reminder: File a Freedom of Information Act request, or FOIA, when the inventories start coming in. 

“And the rest is history,” he said.

Along with Keerti Gopal from Inside Climate News, Juanpablo discovered that the city was about 30 years behind the timeline required by the EPA for replacing lead pipes. Almost exactly a year ago, they published a story revealing that Chicago wouldn’t finish replacing its 412,000 lead service lines until the year 2076. 

“People are already being exposed — they’re being exposed daily. There is no number [of years] that is satisfactory to me, but 20-ish years is better than 50,” local advocate Chakena D. Perry told Juanpablo and Keerti. 

As the two of them were reporting, conversations with residents exposed that the city was behind on another important endeavor: informing residents who may be exposed to lead contamination from their water lines. 

Another FOIA request revealed that, as of last summer, the city had only mailed out about 62,000 notices informing residents they were at risk of lead contamination. That’s out of 900,000 homes and businesses that were supposed to receive notices by a federal deadline of November 16, 2024. 

“That one always felt like the biggest deal to me,” Juanpablo said, “because those were literal public health notices that people needed to have, should have as soon as possible, but they simply didn’t.” 

With the help of data journalists Clayton Aldern, Peter Aldhous, and Amy Qin, the team created a way for residents to find out for themselves if they may be exposed. They built the first publicly available, searchable map of the city’s lead service lines.

Equally important as helping people find out their risk, Juanpablo said, was equipping residents with next steps, like how to request a free lead testing kit or a free water filter.

“That was kind of how we were thinking of it,” Juanpablo said. “If you have a lead service line, what can we immediately tell you, show you, take you to, that can begin to answer some of these questions.”

The final story in the yearlong series, published this week, revealed one more surprising twist in the saga: Replacing lead pipes is more expensive in Chicago than in any other U.S. city dealing with a similar problem. And officials can’t explain why.

Together, the stories reveal the scale of Chicago’s crisis, the burden on its residents, and the uphill battle to fixing it all. They also reveal what happens when people are armed with information. After the second and third stories published, the city saw a spike in hundreds of people requesting free lead testing kits. That means more people are getting information they need about their health risks — and it also sends an important message to the city that residents are informed, paying attention, and concerned about this issue. 

Juanpablo assured me that he’ll keep paying attention as well. He sees his role as a journalist — and his simple desire for everyone to have clean drinking water — as an expression of love for his city.

“I’ll be covering this for the rest of my life,” he said — adding, on a slightly more optimistic note, “I mean, unless they get it done in 20 years.”

Dive deeper:

• Chicago residents risk daily lead exposure from toxic pipes. Replacing them will take decades.
• Chicago was supposed to warn residents about toxic lead pipes last year. Most still have no idea.
• Chicago has the most lead pipes in the nation. We mapped them all.
• How we mapped Chicago’s lead pipe problem and what we learned
• Lead pipes are everywhere in Chicago. Here’s how to protect yourself.
• Why is it so unusually expensive to replace lead pipes in Chicago?

And finally, looking forward to …

… lead pipes becoming a thing of the past.  

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It’s a little bit ironic that the city celebrates the anniversary of removing its last lead pipe with this parade — which will invariably result in cups and flowers and bioconfetti littering the street. Debris that your crew will have to sweep up and haul off to the compost.  

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to celebrate by, like, everybody staying home and drinking from the tap?” you mutter as you navigate through the crowd. 

Your partner shoots you a dirty look, but then smiles. “Well, I guess when you put it like that,” he says, “we celebrate Replacement Day every day.” 

— a drabble by Claire Elise Thompson

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A drabble is a 100-word piece of fiction — in this case, offering a tiny glimpse of what a clean, green, just future might look like. Want to try writing your own (and see it featured in a future newsletter)? We would love to hear from you! Please send us your visions for our climate future, in drabble form, at [email protected]

👋 See you next week!