Last November, the Illinois Commerce Commission ended a pipe replacement project that generated record corporate profits, but did not deliver on its promise to make our communities safer from gas explosions.
The ICC did the right thing when it decided to halt this massive project, which allowed Peoples Gas to let profits, not safety, dictate its pipe replacement strategy. Rather than replacing the most at-risk pipes first, Peoples opted for a wholesale approach, carving up city streets and sidewalks one neighborhood at a time without heed to whether genuine safety concerns existed. A 2020 engineering report by Peoples’ own consultant concluded that the pipe replacement project “has not coincided with a noticeable reduction in pipeline failure rates.”
Nearly 20% of Peoples Gas customers are behind on their bills. In neighborhoods such as Englewood and Woodlawn, those rates rise to closer to 50% and 40%, respectively, with customers averaging nearly $900 in debt. Much of that debt can be attributed to an average $15 monthly charge to replace gas pipes, a program that Peoples Gas now admits has not reduced gas explosions.
Meanwhile, Chicago sits on 409,000 lead water service lines, pipes that are slowly poisoning our children with neurotoxins, especially those in Black and Latino communities that already suffer from disinvestment.
Put simply: Chicago has been digging up the wrong pipes.
An estimated 80% of Chicago homes are connected to lead service lines, more than any other city in the U.S. According to a 2022 study by The Guardian, 1 in 20 tap water samples taken from the homes of thousands of Chicagoans contained lead levels at or above federal limits. This same study also found that nine of the top ten ZIP codes with the largest percentages of high test results were in neighborhoods with majority Black and Latino residents.
The stakes couldn’t be higher: Exposure to lead can have irreversible health impacts. Even at low levels, lead can affect children’s nervous systems and affect their ability to learn; it can also cause kidney problems and higher blood pressure in adults.
There is no time to waste. Chicago must follow the lead of cities such as Cincinnati and Newark, New Jersey, which are significantly ahead of us at the speed at which they are replacing lead service lines.
One of the excuses cited for Chicago’s comparatively slow pace of lead service line replacement is a lack of union contractors to do the work. Rather than putting union members to work in digging up gas lines for a program whose primary purpose seems to be padding the profits of Peoples Gas, we should reallocate those resources toward replacing the water pipes that are poisoning our communities. While the ICC made the right choice to halt the Peoples Gas program, the city must now act quickly to hire newly available union contractors to speed up the removal of lead water service pipes.
In the meantime, we urge Peoples Gas to start a new gas pipe replacement program to replace only those lines that have a high likelihood of failure, rather than digging up entire neighborhoods with little purpose or coordination with other city improvement projects.
We also encourage the City Council to pass the Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance, also known as CABO, introduced by Mayor Brandon Johnson in January, which seeks to reduce carbon emissions citywide by implementing emissions standards on newly constructed large buildings. This legislation is a crucial first step in the necessary transition away from dirty, expensive fossil fuels and toward zero-to-low emission energy systems.
As City Council members, we are tasked with using our city’s resources responsibly to keep Chicagoans safe and create the conditions under which they can thrive. These recommendations — to vastly speed up lead water line replacements, use utility ratepayer money more judiciously by replacing only problematic gas lines and pass CABO to put Chicago on the path to cleaner, more affordable energy systems — will help us live up to that goal by improving the health and safety of our communities, reducing energy bills and creating well-paying union jobs in the process.
That’s the win-win Chicago needs.
Ald. William Hall represents the 6th Ward. Ald. Andre Vasquez represents the 40th Ward.
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