Milwaukee Water Works lead pipes town hall

Tensions flared at a meeting discussing the plan to replace lead pipes in Milwaukee.

MILWAUKEE - Tensions flared at a meeting discussing the plan to replace lead pipes in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee Water Works held the town hall to discuss their "Equity Prioritization Plan."

It is designed to outline the communities with the most need.

The draft Equity Prioritization Plan balances three factors:

Elevated blood lead levels in children 5 years of age or younger
The Area Deprivation Index score
The density of lead service lines (LSL

Each factor is normalized by population and then weighted (Water Works' proposed weighting is 70% ADI, 25% EBLL, and 5% LSL density).

Water Works officials said the Equity Prioritization Plan allows them to score every Census Block Group in Milwaukee and rank each in priority order according to need, using equity as the driving value.

They are looking to expand the replacement efforts with funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

"I'm at the table, and I want to be able to take everything that everyone's saying is wrong to that table. I don't care who's sitting at that table," said Tamika Glenn, chief program officer, Coalition on Lead Emergency. "We are all in this, whether your income is high or low because all of our babies are being affected by this."

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Water Works officials said there are around 65,000 lead pipes around the city, and they have replaced about 6,000 since 2017.

Since then, Milwaukee's lead pipe replacement program has replaced lead water service lines when there is a leak or failure, at newly licensed child care facilities, during water main replacement projects and during certain road reconstruction projects.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said the goal is to replace all lead service lines in the next 20 years.