Lead Innovation Hub
Mayor's Roadmap

Resources

  • Checklist

Mayor’s Roadmap Checklist

This checklist summarizes the six key priorities to guide mayors and city leaders on how to replace lead pipes in their communities within 10 years and protect their residents from lead in drinking water.
  • Checklist

Financial Plan Checklist for Lead Service Line Replacement

Developing a thoughtful financing plan is critical to the program’s long-term success and to ensure adequate funding for full lead pipe replacement.
  • Checklist

Start a Conversation

Ask the right questions of your water utility, municipality, public health department, local community-based organizations, and residents to make key program decisions.
  • Insight

The Unique Case of Investor-Owned Utilities

The consequences of lead on communities are serious regardless of whether the municipality or an investor-owned utility (IOU) owns the water delivery system.
  • Case Study

Learning through Collaboration: Great Lakes Lead Pipes Partnership

There is power in coalition – learning from communities that have seen positive results is the first step to exploring what success can look like in your community.
Mayor Ras Baraka
  • Case Study

Spotlight: A Conversation with a Mayor Spurs Action (Newark, NJ)

At Mayor Baraka’s urging, the Newark City Council passed two ordinances to make the full-scale project possible.
  • Case Study

Lessons from Four Illinois Mayors Interviews

We interviewed mayors and utility staff from four Illinois communities who are working to comply with the Illinois state mandate to replace lead service lines.
  • Case Study

Community Engagement in Denver, CO

Denver Water is a national model for lead service line replacement and has one of the most comprehensive programs in the country, designed to replace all lead service lines in Denver Water’s service area over the course of 15 years.
  • Case Study

Innovative Partnership in Wausau, WI

The EquiFlow Lead-Free Program, launched in early 2024, is an innovative partnership between the City of Wausau, Wisconsin and Community Infrastructure Partners (CIP) to replace up to 8,000 lead service lines within five years.

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Lead Innovation Hub

The Mayor’s Roadmap is part of an initiative that draws on the expertise of advocates, engineers, policy experts, and real-world experiences.

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Privacy Policy

In Benton Harbor, MI, the community-based organization Benton Harbor Solutions hosted a community-led radio show that shared information on city efforts to replace lead service lines in a non-traditional way to the community while simultaneously aiming to build trust between external entities and the community. For example, in November and December 2021, the EPA completed three separate water filtration studies to ensure the efficacy of the removal and reduction of lead in drinking water. Once the results were released in March 2022, Benton Harbor Solutions hosted EPA staff to convey the results effectively.

Milwaukee is one of the few cities in the country with a prioritization plan to ensure neighborhoods likely to suffer the most severe impacts from lead poisoning get their pipes replaced first. In consultation with a community-based group, Coalition for Lead Emergency (COLE), and following a public engagement process, Milwaukee included in an ordinance three indicators to prioritize where LSLs will be removed first:

  1. The area deprivation index (ADI), which is a compilation of social determinants of health
  2. The percentage of children found to have elevated lead levels in their blood when tested for lead poisoning
  3. The density of lead service lines in the neighborhood.

Read more here.