Onondaga County, New York is starting to pull lead pipes out of the ground, kicking off what will be a years-long effort to replace the aging water lines still connecting thousands of homes to the public system.
The county has posted a solicitation for Phase 1 materials for its lead service line replacement program, a first step in staged work aimed at meeting a federal deadline that requires water systems nationwide to eliminate lead service lines entirely by 2037. The EPA finalized that requirement in October 2024, the most aggressive federal action on drinking water lead in more than three decades.
The urgency is acute in Onondaga County, home to Syracuse, where childhood lead poisoning rates have been documented at several times the national average. The county declared lead poisoning a public health emergency in 2022. Much of the problem stems from lead paint in the city's old housing stock, but drinking water lines running to pre-World War II homes compound the exposure. Researchers and public health officials have compared Syracuse's rates to those seen in Flint, Mich., during that city's water crisis, the catastrophe that ultimately forced Washington to act.
Lead has no safe level of exposure in children. Even low doses cause irreversible neurological damage, affecting learning, behavior and development.
Funding for the work flows from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which set aside $15 billion specifically for lead service line replacement and routes the money to states through the EPA's Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. New York received one of the larger state allocations and has been directing funds to municipalities like Onondaga County ever since.
New York also required all water systems to complete a full inventory of their lead service lines by October 2024, a prerequisite for the replacement work now beginning. The "Phase 1" label signals that Onondaga County has structured the project in stages, a common approach for large infrastructure programs that span multiple years and budgets.
With the federal replacement window opening in 2027 and closing in 2037, this fall's procurement marks the opening move in what county officials expect to be a sustained push to get lead out of Onondaga County's water system entirely.
