Chicago\u2019s top water officials defended Monday their decision to skirt a law requiring the city to warn nearly a million Chicagoans that their water comes from toxic lead service pipes.<\/p>\n
Aldermen pressed Department of Water Management leaders during a City Council hearing about why the department has fallen far short of notification requirements.<\/p>\n
The city has mailed out fewer than a tenth of the letters it was required to send by a federal notification deadline in November 2024, acknowledged Patrick Schwer, director of water quality surveillance. But he defended the decision as a practical move to spend more money on fixing pipes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpending $10 million just to send a bunch of letters that people throw in their trash seems like a waste of money, especially when that money should be spent on replacing actual lead service lines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The only way for the city to comply with federal and state notification rules would be for the city to mail letters to around 900,000 renters, homeowners and landlords, Schwer said.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Schwer still touted the city\u2019s notification efforts as a bid to be \u201cas transparent as humanly possible\u201d with residents. The department has sent around 75,000 letters this year to single-family homes with lead service lines<\/a>, plus another 120,000 notices via billing inserts to homes suspected of having toxic lines, with more letters to come, he told the committee.<\/p>\n The city has also provided an online database where residents can see what materials the Water Department recorded<\/a> at their address, and it offers \u201cthe most comprehensive and easiest lead-testing program in the country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are open, we want to make sure that we are open and honest with every resident we have. We want them to know what we know,\u201d Schwer said.<\/p>\n