An aside: lead exposure is thought to lead to increase violence. I wonder if Chicago having the most lead pipes is also a contributing cause of their (reputed) crime problem.
Broadly speaking, maintaining this infrastructure is expensive because the need for labor is unavoidable and it is labor intensive.
These Chicago pipes are end of life and need replaced. They have been working on it for at least 20 years.
*in theory they claim to be working hard to better coordinate this between agencies.
https://www.leadsafechicago.org/lead-service-line-replacemen...
> Replacing a lead service line with a new copper service means running the new line from the water main in the street all the way into the house. There are two ways that can be done. With open trench replacements, a trench is dug from the home through the parkway to install the new service and access the water main. Trenchless construction runs the new service to the main underground, causing less disturbance to the surrounding area. The type of procedure performed will depend on several factors specific to each replacement.
https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/water/general...
This is true. For the private sector, it works pretty well. Road digging permits are posted on their webpage 6+ months in advance. If you see one on a section of street you planned to do work on, you are allowed to piggyback on the project and share the cost. If you don’t, you pay the entire cost. So there is huge incentive to coordinate. But city agencies? Not quite so incentivized.
I would argue pipe bursting is the best trench-less solution for any place, but it is more destructive than those other three options.
Some states are more schizophrenic than others. New York is simultaneously mandating replacement with high pressure gas mains that require biannual inspection and banning gas lines.
Lead pipes are an engineering and chemistry issue. Pipes that are functioning properly don’t need replacement.
https://www.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024-CPD-An...
There are pages of tables comparing 2023 and 2024 on page 108. Sadly, they don’t go back multiple years.
Page 112 says there were 9112 aggravated assaults in 2024.
Page 10 of the 2004 report says there were 18,731 that year.
I’m sure you can find someone that’s graphed the trends online. Maybe an LLM can do it. Anyway, there isn’t a violent crime crisis in Chicago.
Reports going back to the 1990’s: https://www.chicagopolice.org/statistics-data/statistical-re...
plastic is often rated at less but that is because they don't bother to test any longer, when properly installed and used plastic should last longer than copper.
It was over CA$10k to get it done, but the cost of trenching that line could have been 3-4x the amount + an unacceptable risk to the foundation of the house from destabilizing the dirt around it.
When crimes aren't prosecuted the police don't make arrests and the public don't make reports.
Crime stats are basically useless if the prosecutors aren't bringing charges, which is exactly what's happening all over the country.
The abhorrent level of crime is spread across the country, largely perpetuated by those who refuse to consider gun control. There were 16,576 gun deaths in the US in 2024, excluding suicides. 45 every day. About a third of those are children.
Chicago is close to 1% of the population of the US. Looking at three days, seeing a cluster of shootings, and not having the stats or basic business experience to understand the basic Possion distribution of events, is malpractice.
Whoever told you to be upset at Chicago, but not about the mass gun violence every day, tricked you. You got fooled.
And be against their self interests. When crime is up, police get more money.
https://www.pe100plus.com/PE-Pipes/Technical-guidance/model/...
> In 1986, Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), prohibiting the use of lead in pipes, and solder and flux on products used in public water systems that provide water for human consumption. Lead-free was defined as solder and flux with no more than 0.2% lead and pipes with no more than 8%.
> In 2011, Congress passed the RLDWA, which revised the definition of lead free and took effect in 2013. Lead free was now defined as the lead content of the wetted surfaces of plumbing products as a weighted average of no greater than 0.25% for products that contact water intended for consumption, and 0.2% for solder and flux.
https://www.workingpressuremag.com/epa-final-lead-free-rulin...
A lot of municipal water systems have done more recent (but by no means required) improvements to the water itself to “coat” the lead in supply lines. Beyond just pH control, like orthophosphate. Most just in the last decade or so.
For Chicago, it’s an active project
> Polyphosphate is being removed because recent studies have shown that it may negatively impact lead corrosion control.
> Polyphosphate was initially added with the orthophosphate to mask discoloration of the water from metals such as iron or manganese.
https://villageofalsip.org/Chicago%20Department%20of%20Water...
This is an outright lie. Why don't you care about the lives being lost in Chicago?
Chicago has double the rate of homicide relative to LA, double the amount of rapes and 50% more robberies.
Why are you okay with just letting Chicago live in such high levels of violence by trying to pooh pooh away the facts?
So the crime hypothesis is more about baseline level of criminality being higher throughout the entire leaded gasoline era and for a few decades thereafter. It's generally framed as social science based on aggregate trends rather than individual dose-dependent epidemiological hypothesis.
If you're in these communities in Chicago then I'm sorry but judging from your general ignorance of Chicago it seems pretty clear that you are not.
Even during the pandemic peaks i never felt unsafe in the city.
This thread has had a lot of twists and turns, but I wasn't expecting this one. Yikes.
They also have stats on number of times people call or report crimes vs. number of arrests, gun pulls, etc.
Those stats overwhelmingly disprove the theory that trust in the police department has eroded and people are no longer reporting crime.
Rather than believe and re-repeat lies from propaganda outlets (we have really good propaganda in the US and it uses social media to spread), check primary sources.
It takes less time than writing this comment did.
It would be a drop in the bucket, if it's even a measurable contributing factor at all.
The primary cause is relatively boring: a century of racist housing policy, policing, under-investment, which results in a self-sustaining vicious cycle of poverty and crime. Couple that with broader national issues like the gutting of local manufacturing industry, the crack epidemic, the "war on drugs" and more and crime is what you get.
Chicago was (and still is) a segregated city, achieved indirectly through redlining and other thinly-veiled policies. Like many things, it's probably going to take much longer to fix the problem than it took to create it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of no-name Amazon and aliexpress plumbing fixtures still have a lot of lead in them. Keeps your cutting tool/machining costs down.
Additionally, while you think that the ordering of the report is in order of police’s priorities, I (more cynically) think it reflects them ‘burying’ the numbers.
‘Horizontal directional drilling’ is the more technical term, directional boring is more of a trade name.
Probably can’t get away with using it in new builds but anything else, I’m sure it got used regularly well after the 1986 “ban” and still today.