U.S. Reps. Lauren Underwood and Bill Foster have secured over $1 million from the federal government to help replace lead pipes in Aurora, city officials said.
Tests done last year found high levels of lead in the drinking water of some Aurora homes. However, officials at the time said that the water coming from the water treatment plant was lead-free — it is just that some of the pipes that connect individual homes to the city’s water system are made of lead.
Aurora has been working to replace these lead “service lines” for years. Since 2018, the city has replaced 3,290 of them throughout the community, according to a recent city news release.
The recent federal funding secured by Underwood and Foster, which totals nearly $1.1 million, will be used to replace around 120 lead service lines, the news release said. Officials estimated that around 400 residents will be impacted through the replacements.
Aurora Mayor John Laesch recognized the two members of Congress for their efforts at a meeting of the City Council’s Committee of the Whole on Tuesday evening. Lead pipe replacement is a priority for Laesch’s administration, he said, and so he is grateful for the support.
“It’ll help us continue to move towards the replacement of 16,000 across the city total,” Laesch said.
The two local Democratic members of Congress had been working together for “well over a year now” to secure the funding, Underwood said. As a nurse, she said she knows that using federal dollars to remove lead pipes is important to make sure there is clean, healthy and safe drinking water.
“It’s really a moment to celebrate, my friends,” she told the audience at the Tuesday meeting. “Illinois has the most lead pipes of any state in the country, and so we’ve been working hard over the last several years to bring back the resources to get those replaced.”
Foster, in his own speech just after Underwood’s, said that they had originally asked for $3 million, but that they would be pushing for more funding “every chance we get.”
Lead is toxic and can cause serious health problems, especially for children, according to the U.S. EPA.
Even at low levels, lead in a child’s bloodstream can cause developmental issues, the EPA’s website says. Lead is dangerous for adults, too, and is of particular concern for those who are pregnant because it can hurt the developing baby.
Water is not the only way people can be exposed to lead. Considering various risks of exposure, the state has identified many areas across the state, including in the Aurora area, where children are required to be tested for lead exposure.
These “Pediatric Lead Poisoning High-Risk ZIP Code Areas” can be found on the Illinois Department of Public Health’s website.
Last year’s tests that found elevated levels of lead in the drinking water of some Aurora homes came after the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency instituted new water testing standards in late 2024.
City officials have said these changes have contributed to certain homes in the city now exceeding the action level for lead. Under previous standards, only the first liter of water that came out of a faucet in a residential unit would be sampled to test for lead particles — but now, both the first and fifth liters of water must be sampled.
Higher rates of lead were found since the fifth liter of water spent more time in the service line, which in some houses is still made out of lead, so more of those particles dissolved in the water, city officials previously said.
Aurora is planning to remove more lead service lines in the coming years, including through water main replacement projects.
The state of Illinois is set to ramp up its lead water line replacement mandates starting in 2027, officials have said. Last year’s water rate increase
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should cover the cost of that state mandate, but a different federal mandate may raise that requirement even further and cost even more.Laesch previously said that lead line replacements will have a “huge” impact on the city’s next budget cycle.
More information on the city’s lead service line replacement program can be found at yourvoice.aurora.il.us/leadnotice.
In addition to replacing lead service lines, Aurora also recently began introducing a new chemical into its drinking water that reacts with lead pipes to seal in the lead and prevent it from leaching into the water. The chemical, called dipotassium orthophosphate, is tasteless, odorless and safe for consumption, according to Aurora Superintendent of Water Production Bob Leible.
In fact, he has said that someone would need to drink 40 liters of the water in one sitting just to get the amount of phosphorus that’s in a single banana.
Other cities throughout the United States and Canada have been using the chemical in their drinking water for decades. According to Leible, Chicago and Elgin are also starting to include orthophosphate in their water.