53 ms·

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

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.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
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.
- brianwawok 1y ago
  Directional what? When Chicago replaces pipes, they dig the street up, put in pipes, and lay down a new street. I’ve literally seen them do this, then one month later tear up the same street for a natural gas pipe project . 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.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    https://youtu.be/jFTzwGv1sUg https://youtu.be/jFTzwGv1sUg https://youtu.be/t3hTQDfZrfk https://youtu.be/t3hTQDfZrfk https://youtu.be/BKGizzPJIqE https://youtu.be/BKGizzPJIqE https://www.leadsafechicago.org/lead-service-line-replacement 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/Engineering/WMdesignStd/CDWM_WaterSection_Standard_Notes_Info.pdf https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/water/general...
    - bluGill 1y ago
      Meanwhile everyone else has moved to plastic pipes which will last longer, are cheaper, and leach no metals (microplastics don't seem to come from water lines frome what I can tell, but I'm looking for confirmation)
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        Copper lasts ~20 years longer than plastic, making copper a superior choice for the longevity needed for the use case. Also, copper has anti microbial properties and rarely leaches in material quantities unless the water has a low pH.
        bluGill 1y ago
        https://www.teppfa.eu/media/industry-studies/meta-study-100-years-of-lifetime-of-plastic-pipes/ https://www.teppfa.eu/media/industry-studies/meta-study-100-... 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.
        SlightlyLeftPad 1y ago
        But has the tradeoff of using lead solder at every joint
        frosted-flakes 1y ago
        Lead solder hasn't been used in the US since 1986, when it was banned by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
        Scoundreller 1y ago
        “Lead free” isn’t zero lead. > 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-ruling/ 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%20Management%20Treatment%20Changes%20FAQ.pdf https://villageofalsip.org/Chicago%20Department%20of%20Water...
  - stockresearcher 1y ago
    > in theory they claim to be working hard to better coordinate this between agencies. 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.
    - Spooky23 1y ago
      There’s lots of exceptions. The lead pipe hysteria and low pressure gas replacement is exempt from all of that. 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.
  - pengaru 1y ago
    The Chicagoland area is constantly rebuilding the roads regardless of what the pipes are doing... when it's warm enough anyways.
  - quickthrowman 1y ago
    They aren’t trenching through yards from the street to the house to replace water service lines, they’re digging a pit where the water main is and directional boring from the street to the house and installing a new service line in the borehole. ‘Horizontal directional drilling’ is the more technical term, directional boring is more of a trade name.
- peterbecich 1y ago
  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.
  - hippo22 1y ago
    I know epoxy coating is used in large hydro power dams, so I have to assume it's used for municipal sewer lines as well.
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
    It's somewhat funny because most epoxy is just straight BPA. Yes, that BPA.
  - mikepurvis 1y ago
    I had my residential waste pipe lined with a fibreglass/resin sheath about a year ago. Inserting it was a process involving a lot of work on endoscopes and then the liner itself was adhered to the old pipe using a bladder filled with hot water. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cured-in-place_pipe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cured-in-place_pipe 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.
hedora 1y ago
Crime’s down in Chicago. 2024 saw a ~6-7% drop: https://www.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024-CPD-Annual-Report-Final-For-Publishing.pdf#page104 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-reports/annual-reports/ https://www.chicagopolice.org/statistics-data/statistical-re...
- blindriver 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - epistasis 1y ago
    That's a typical weekend in the US for a population the size of Chicago, nothing out of the ordinary for US fun culture. 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.
    - silisili 1y ago
      Chicago has nearly 4x the murder rate and 2x the violent crime rate compared to the US at large.
      - kittoes 1y ago
        Yet it isn't even in the top 20 cities for murder, nor the top 50 for overall crime. The only reason so many are focusing specifically on Chicago is because their cult leader told them to.
qinsig 1y ago
Pollutants don't get in because water pipes are pressurized
- djtriptych 1y ago
  isn't this only true if they are always pressurized?
  - frosted-flakes 1y ago
    They are always pressurised during normal use. When they are depressurised because of a water main break or for maintenance (and they try to do this as little as possible), orders are given to flush the lines before drinking any of the water.
- SkyPuncher 1y ago
  Absolutely not true. Pollutants don’t get into the lines because there are decades of mineral deposits built up inside these pipes.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
erosenbe0 1y ago
Median, normal lead exposure for toddlers in the 1960s and 1970s in any urban or suburban area would be 99th percentile by today's standards due to leaded gasoline vapors (and lack of awareness about paint dust). 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.
nkrisc 1y ago
> 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. 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.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

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.

brianwawok 1y ago
Directional what? When Chicago replaces pipes, they dig the street up, put in pipes, and lay down a new street. I’ve literally seen them do this, then one month later tear up the same street for a natural gas pipe project . 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.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  https://youtu.be/jFTzwGv1sUg https://youtu.be/jFTzwGv1sUg https://youtu.be/t3hTQDfZrfk https://youtu.be/t3hTQDfZrfk https://youtu.be/BKGizzPJIqE https://youtu.be/BKGizzPJIqE https://www.leadsafechicago.org/lead-service-line-replacement 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/Engineering/WMdesignStd/CDWM_WaterSection_Standard_Notes_Info.pdf https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/water/general...
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Meanwhile everyone else has moved to plastic pipes which will last longer, are cheaper, and leach no metals (microplastics don't seem to come from water lines frome what I can tell, but I'm looking for confirmation)
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      Copper lasts ~20 years longer than plastic, making copper a superior choice for the longevity needed for the use case. Also, copper has anti microbial properties and rarely leaches in material quantities unless the water has a low pH.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        https://www.teppfa.eu/media/industry-studies/meta-study-100-years-of-lifetime-of-plastic-pipes/ https://www.teppfa.eu/media/industry-studies/meta-study-100-... 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.
      - SlightlyLeftPad 1y ago
        But has the tradeoff of using lead solder at every joint
        frosted-flakes 1y ago
        Lead solder hasn't been used in the US since 1986, when it was banned by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
        Scoundreller 1y ago
        “Lead free” isn’t zero lead. > 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-ruling/ 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%20Management%20Treatment%20Changes%20FAQ.pdf https://villageofalsip.org/Chicago%20Department%20of%20Water...
- stockresearcher 1y ago
  > in theory they claim to be working hard to better coordinate this between agencies. 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.
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    There’s lots of exceptions. The lead pipe hysteria and low pressure gas replacement is exempt from all of that. 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.
- pengaru 1y ago
  The Chicagoland area is constantly rebuilding the roads regardless of what the pipes are doing... when it's warm enough anyways.
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  They aren’t trenching through yards from the street to the house to replace water service lines, they’re digging a pit where the water main is and directional boring from the street to the house and installing a new service line in the borehole. ‘Horizontal directional drilling’ is the more technical term, directional boring is more of a trade name.
peterbecich 1y ago
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.
- hippo22 1y ago
  I know epoxy coating is used in large hydro power dams, so I have to assume it's used for municipal sewer lines as well.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  It's somewhat funny because most epoxy is just straight BPA. Yes, that BPA.
- mikepurvis 1y ago
  I had my residential waste pipe lined with a fibreglass/resin sheath about a year ago. Inserting it was a process involving a lot of work on endoscopes and then the liner itself was adhered to the old pipe using a bladder filled with hot water. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cured-in-place_pipe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cured-in-place_pipe 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.

hedora 1y ago

Crime’s down in Chicago. 2024 saw a ~6-7% drop: https://www.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024-CPD-Annual-Report-Final-For-Publishing.pdf#page104 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-reports/annual-reports/ https://www.chicagopolice.org/statistics-data/statistical-re...

blindriver 1y ago
[flagged]
- epistasis 1y ago
  That's a typical weekend in the US for a population the size of Chicago, nothing out of the ordinary for US fun culture. 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.
  - silisili 1y ago
    Chicago has nearly 4x the murder rate and 2x the violent crime rate compared to the US at large.
    - kittoes 1y ago
      Yet it isn't even in the top 20 cities for murder, nor the top 50 for overall crime. The only reason so many are focusing specifically on Chicago is because their cult leader told them to.

qinsig 1y ago

Pollutants don't get in because water pipes are pressurized

djtriptych 1y ago
isn't this only true if they are always pressurized?
- frosted-flakes 1y ago
  They are always pressurised during normal use. When they are depressurised because of a water main break or for maintenance (and they try to do this as little as possible), orders are given to flush the lines before drinking any of the water.
SkyPuncher 1y ago
Absolutely not true. Pollutants don’t get into the lines because there are decades of mineral deposits built up inside these pipes.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

erosenbe0 1y ago

Median, normal lead exposure for toddlers in the 1960s and 1970s in any urban or suburban area would be 99th percentile by today's standards due to leaded gasoline vapors (and lack of awareness about paint dust). 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.

nkrisc 1y ago

> 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. 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.