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.

The Great Lakes Lead Pipes Partnership was formed in April 2024 with three participating mayors: Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit, Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, and Mayor Cavalier Johnson of Milwaukee. These three Great Lakes cities are among those with the most lead pipes in the country. This first-of-its kind mayor-led partnership is designed to create shared learnings, highlight emerging best practices, and to replicate successes from city to city facing similar challenges. 

Our partnership with the Great Lakes Lead Pipes Partnership will safeguard effective, equitable implementation of existing federal funds. We’ll be working to make sure we share best practices with one another so we can pull those services out of the ground. And we’ll also work to overcome some of the common challenges that we see on the ground in our own communities.

Mayor Johnson of Milwaukee at White House Water Summit (April 2024)
From left to right: Gabe Amo, Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Mayor Cavalier Johnson of Milwaukee, WI, Mayor Malik Evans of Rochester, NY, County Executive Matthew Meyer of New Castle County, DE, Mayor Katie Rosenberg of Wausau, WI and Mayor Christopher Taylor of Ann Arbor, MI on a panel at the White House Lead Pipe Summit on January 27, 2023. Image source.

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.