When I was a middle school math teacher in West Humboldt Park, one of my students showed up every single day. Front row. Notes taken. Homework done. She worked harder than almost anyone in that classroom. But when tests came, she couldn’t hold on to what she had learned. We tried everything: glasses, extra time, one-on-one support. The results didn’t change.
I can’t say with certainty what was holding her back. But I know what was coming out of the water fountains at that school: brownish, dirty water I was afraid to let my students drink. I told them not to. The school lunch program served milk with no water option. Most of my students were Black. Black children experience higher rates of lactose intolerance, which meant many of my kids went the entire school day without clean, safe drinking water and instead milk that gave them an upset stomach.
Lead poisoning causes cognitive impairment and difficulty with memory formation. I am not a doctor. But I have thought about that student a lot since the Sun-Times reported last year on a Flint, Michigan-level lead crisis flowing directly into over 400,000 Chicago households, disproportionately in Black and nonwhite neighborhoods, whose residents unknowingly use that water to drink, cook, wash hands and bathe their children.
Chicago’s plan to replace those pipes is already 30 years behind the federal deadline. In West Humboldt Park alone, the city estimates that up to 87% of lines must be replaced and 57% already contain lead. A federally mandated public information campaign to warn the households most at risk has been an unacceptably low priority. It is embarrassing and teetering on criminal that Chicago struggled to mail just 3,000 notices per week last year to residents in the most affected neighborhoods, while Milwaukee dispatched over 100,000 in a single day that same year. Detroit managed 124,000 last year, following 200,000 the year before.
This is one of the largest public health crises in the United States, and Chicago needs an immediate response.
My proposal is this: Buy under-the-sink water filters. Filters that remove lead, dissolved solids, microplastics and other harmful contaminants. Filters that cost $150 and take 30 minutes to install. The science backs it up: A field study conducted in Flint found that certified point-of-use filters brought lead levels below safe thresholds in over 97% of homes tested, including homes where unfiltered tap water was severely contaminated. I have one in my home. As I have campaigned for mayor, I have already installed them in other people’s homes. A young expectant couple reached out to me, afraid their water would poison their unborn baby. I went to their apartment in December and installed a filter. They have had clean water ever since.
At scale, providing and installing these filters in every household with lead pipes would cost approximately $60 million, according to my analysis. Full lead pipe replacement across the city is estimated at $12 billion, a project that will take decades of political will, budget reckoning and construction. The filter program and the infrastructure replacement can run simultaneously. One is an immediate solution available right now. The other is a structural project my administration would prioritize and properly fund.
We can also turn this program into a jobs pipeline for young Chicagoans. Recruit, train and deploy high schoolers, college students and anyone interested in the plumbing trades. Pay them reliable, livable wages. Four hundred workers installing 1,000 filters apiece gets the job done in under a year and creates real career pathways in the neighborhoods hit hardest by this crisis.
The funding already exists. Federal dollars are available. We can stop poisoning our children, create jobs, and restore a basic right to every resident in this city for about $60 million in one year instead of $12 billion over 70 years. That is 200 times more affordable and lifetimes faster.
This is not a permanent fix. Full line replacement still needs to happen, and it will. But we cannot do nothing while we wait for a project that will outlast multiple mayoral administrations. We must problem-solve. We must act, and we must act now.
Joe Holberg is a Chicago mayoral candidate. He was a math teacher on the West Side, then a small business owner and entrepreneur helping Chicagoans work toward financial goals.
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