Illinois’ 1.5 million toxic lead service lines represent not just a public health emergency but a decade-long economic opportunity — one that could generate 90,000 jobs if state lawmakers commit the sustained funding the project requires.

Illinois has a lead pipe problem that is also a workforce opportunity. A new analysis lays out how replacing the state’s 1.5 million toxic service lines could generate 90,000 jobs over a decade — if Springfield finds the will to fund it. Nearly 1.5 million service lines — the pipes that carry drinking water to homes and businesses across the state — contain or are suspected to contain lead, a neurotoxin linked to cognitive, reproductive, and cardiovascular problems. The state has the most lead pipes in the country, a distinction rooted in Chicago’s own history: Illinois estimates it has 667,000 known lead service lines and another 820,000 suspected lines, with Chicago alone accounting for nearly 30 percent of those pipes.

For decades, that crisis has been treated primarily as an infrastructure and public health problem — a staggering liability to be managed on a slow, underfunded timeline. Public health and workforce advocates, drawing on projections from the American Water Works Association and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, argue that replacing Illinois’ toxic lead pipes is not just a cost to be borne but an engine waiting to be built — one capable of creating tens of thousands of jobs, diversifying the building trades, and delivering safe drinking water to communities that have waited too long.

The analysis draws on research from several Chicago-area nonprofits, including workforce development group HIRE360, water solutions hub Current, and Elevate, an organization focused on water and energy affordability. Its findings are a direct call to action for the Illinois General Assembly.

The Jobs Math: From 11,000 to 90,000 — Depending on What Springfield Does

The report’s central argument turns on a funding question that Springfield has so far declined to answer directly. Using workforce projections from the American Water Works Association and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, analysts calculated that already-allocated federal funds could generate approximately 2,000 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs. If the legislature closed the multi-billion-dollar funding gap, those figures could jump substantially to 35,000 direct jobs and 55,000 indirect jobs — a total of 90,000 jobs over a decade.

The difference between those two scenarios is not technical. It is political. State officials have estimated that replacing all the known or suspected lead pipes across Illinois could cost between $6 and $10 billion. The Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set aside $15 billion over five years to help states replace lead pipes nationally. Illinois is estimated to receive about $1 billion, but given the state’s unique needs, that number is probably on the low side.

The analysis makes the case that state lawmakers must approve dedicated, sustained, and predictable funding to close the multi-billion-dollar shortfall. Without long-term guarantees, replacements will likely remain inefficient and delayed.

Jay Rowell, executive director at HIRE360, captured the structural problem plainly: “It’s a bit of a chicken and egg: Unless you know how much money is going to be allocated to this — how many opportunities are coming down the pipe — they’re not going to add additional people to apprenticeship programs.”

That dynamic is not hypothetical. It describes exactly what has happened in Chicago over the past several years. Despite having the most lead service lines of any city in the country, Chicago has replaced fewer than 8,000 lines over the last four years — an average of roughly 2,000 per year. The federal Lead and Copper Rule Improvements require Chicago to replace nearly 20,000 pipes per year beginning in 2027. Chicago’s replacement plan, submitted to the Illinois EPA and obtained through public records, aims to complete 8,300 replacements annually for 50 years — wrapping up in 2076. Documents show city officials are aware of the new federal requirements but have not yet updated their plans.

Among the five U.S. cities estimated to have the most lead pipes — Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit, and Milwaukee — Chicago is the only one that has not committed to meeting the federal deadline. The others plan to finish within a decade of 2027.

Children Are Being Poisoned While the Plans Are Being Written

The scale of harm the current slow pace perpetuates is documented and ongoing. According to a study, two-thirds of Chicago children under 6 years old live in homes with tap water containing detectable levels of lead. There is no safe level of lead exposure. Lead is a neurotoxin that can cause brain damage, developmental delays, cardiovascular disease, and reproductive harm. The effects on young children — whose developing brains are most susceptible — can be permanent.

In Illinois, the Metropolitan Planning Council found that people of color are up to twice as likely as white people to live in a community burdened by lead service lines. In Chicago, nearly two-thirds of Black and Latino residents live in municipalities that contain 94 percent of the state’s known lead service lines. The lead pipe crisis in Illinois is inseparable from the state’s history of racially segregated disinvestment — and any solution that does not address that geography will replicate the inequity through inaction.

The cost of a single replacement in Chicago makes the equity stakes even sharper. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency found that a single service line replacement can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $13,000 across the state. In Chicago, the price tag is even higher — city officials estimated that replacements cost more than $30,000 per line on average. That figure is roughly triple the national average, a structural cost problem that advocates argue can be reduced by replacing pipes block-by-block rather than one at a time — but only if the scale of funding enables that approach.

The federal funding environment makes delays all the more dangerous. The Trump administration’s proposal for the EPA next fiscal year would cut the agency’s budget by more than half, slashing almost all the money for the low-interest loan program that states rely on to update water pipes. A group of Illinois congressional delegates led by Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi has already pressed the EPA to release $3 billion in withheld infrastructure funding designated for lead pipe replacement, warning that the funding delay is a “dangerous politicization” that puts children and families at risk.

The Diversity Gap in the Trades Is Also a Problem That Must Be Solved

The 90,000-job figure carries a condition that researchers are explicit about: those jobs can only be equitably distributed if the building trades pipeline is fundamentally reformed.

An analysis of Chicago’s workforce found that only 3.8 percent of registered apprentices are women and just 10 percent are Black. To bridge this gap, the analysis advocates for requiring utilities and municipalities to include diversity and equity requirements in project contracts.

That gap reflects a structural problem that has persisted in Chicago’s construction and trades sector for decades. Women and people of color face barriers not just in entering the trades, but in staying. In 2023, women accounted for 4.5 percent of U.S. construction apprentices but 6 percent of cancellations. Studies have found that over the last two decades, around two-thirds of Black construction apprentices did not complete their programs. Employer bias, scheduling instability, and limited mentorship pathways all contribute to those gaps.

HIRE360 — one of the contributing organizations — was founded in 2020 precisely to address this dynamic. The South Loop-based workforce development nonprofit connects minority and women candidates with union apprenticeship opportunities across 37 trades, partnering with developers, general contractors, construction unions, and community organizations to build a pipeline that reflects the demographics of the city it serves. Rowell has noted that the average age of trade union members in the Chicago area is in the 50s — “a lot of retirements coming. At the same time you have a number of massive projects on the horizon.”

Those retirements, combined with the projected volume of lead pipe replacement work, represent precisely the opening that advocates are trying to harness — but only if the workforce pipeline is deliberately built to include those most affected by the crisis. The analysis argues that Illinois has the rare opportunity to tackle two challenges at once: address its toxic legacy while laying the groundwork for a more inclusive economy.

What Springfield Must Do — and What Happens If It Doesn’t

The political logic of the call to action is straightforward: the time to expand apprenticeship programs is before the funding commitments are in place — not after. Without predictable state funding, training programs cannot recruit and certify workers at the scale required. Without workers, replacement timelines slip further. The result is a slower replacement schedule, more lead exposure, and an economic opportunity that never fully materializes.

The EPA estimates its new lead pipe rule will annually prevent up to 900,000 cases of low birth weight and 1,500 cases of premature death from heart disease. Those are not abstract projections. They are lives — concentrated in Chicago’s South and West Sides, in Black and Latino neighborhoods, in communities that were required by Chicago’s own municipal code to have lead pipes installed long after the rest of the country had stopped using them.

The federal window is closing. The $15 billion in national lead service line replacement funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act expires next year. Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, has warned that Chicago must act immediately to capture that funding before it evaporates: “If Chicago isn’t beating down the doors to get that money, that is tragic, because that money could evaporate. They should be front-end loading as much of the service line replacement as they possibly can.”

Illinois has the most toxic lead pipes in the country. Replacing them is not optional. The only question before Springfield is whether the state will fund the work in a way that creates 90,000 jobs and a more diverse trades workforce — or leave that potential unrealized while Chicagoans keep drinking poisoned water for another 50 years.