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City utility outlines scale-up to meet EPA lead rule and warns of large local costs
Summary
Greater Cincinnati Water Works told the Finance Committee it must ramp lead-service-line replacements toward a new EPA mandate that requires full removal by 2037; officials said procurement delays, rising material costs and limited federal funding mean tens of millions in local costs and higher rates are likely.
Andrea Yang, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Water Works, told the Cincinnati City Council Finance Committee on May 16 that the utility is “scaling up to get to the 3,000 replacements per year” required under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new lead service-line rule, which requires utilities to complete removals by 2037 and to begin removing at least 10% per year starting October 2027.
Yang said GCWW has removed about 10,000 lead service lines since 2018 and set an interim goal of 2,000 replacements this year, up from 1,200 in 2024. She said program constraints — including bidding delays, construction coordination with other utilities and a very small pool of competing contractors — have limited progress. “Right now, we really only have two bidders that are competing in this space,” Yang said.
Sam Stevens, GCWW’s chief financial officer, testified that federal funding for lead replacement to date has been limited. “We’ve drawn down $6 to $7 million through the life of the program,” Stevens said, and the utility is applying for more than $15 million in recent applications but has a “very low success rate.” Stevens said GCWW projects replacement costs could run “anywhere from $15 to $20 million a year” at current estimates and that supply and labor competition nationally will drive inflation in those costs.
Councilmember Jeffries ran the arithmetic in public after the presentation, combining projected lead replacement and PFAS treatment costs to underline the scale of the local financing challenge. Using figures presented in the session, Jeffries said the city faces total costs “between $225,000,000 and $290,000,000” over the coming years when combining lead replacement and PFAS treatment funding gaps.
Yang and Stevens said some PFAS-related costs may be offset by anticipated settlements in product-liability litigation against manufacturers, and Stevens said GCWW expects on the order of $30 million in settlement dollars. But both officials warned that the majority of costs created by federal mandates and rising material prices would be borne locally and thus fall to ratepayers unless larger federal grants are secured.
The hearing produced no formal vote or decision. Council members pressed GCWW for more detail on the pipeline of planned work, contractor capacity, and federal grant strategy; Yang and Stevens said the utility is diversifying contracting approaches, working with procurement and DEI staff to attract bidders, and seeking loan and forgivable-loan programs through state and federal channels. The committee filed the presentation for the record and moved on to other departmental briefings.
