Chicago has the most lead pipes in the nation

I wonder what the accuracy of the data is like. And what do you do about damaged pipes? I read that cities lose a lot of water to leaks. Doesn’t that also mean pollutants can get in? And it won’t matter if your pipe is lead or whatever else.

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.

You replace them by running new service lines using directional boring, falling back to trenching when directional boring is not an option. In the case of waste and sewer lines, you can run an epoxy coating internally (“relining”) versus replacement, which has cost savings ($100-$250/foot of pipe).

Broadly speaking, maintaining this infrastructure is expensive because the need for labor is unavoidable and it is labor intensive.

I don't know that epoxy coating is used at the municipal level. Pipe bursting with high-density polyethylene is the typical solution to avoid re-trenching municipal sewer pipes. Epoxy liners, epoxy coatings and polyurethane coatings are typical for a single property.

I would argue pipe bursting is the best trench-less solution for any place, but it is more destructive than those other three options.