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This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

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When Jarvis Parker was looking to buy a house in Waterbury in late 2019, he had several basic criteria.

He wanted to avoid properties with leaking roofs and flooded basements. And he needed a place with enough space for himself, his daughter and his now 4-year-old grandson.

The modest two-bedroom home that Parker eventually purchased in Waterbury’s East End checked all of those boxes.

Five years later, however, he’s confronting a problem he never saw coming: a potentially toxic water line. 

Parker was informed this year that a small pipe known as a service line, which connects his house to the larger water main that runs under the street, could be made of lead.

The news stunned Parker, a disabled military veteran. He was so concerned about the water line and what it could do to his family’s health that he stopped using the tap water until he could purchase a filter to install on his kitchen sink.

“I got things going on that the doctors can’t even figure out,” Parker said. “And now you tell me that I’ve got bad water, lead water coming in?” 

“That right there really scared me,” he added.

Home builders and water utilities were banned in the mid-1980s from using lead plumbing in order to prevent the toxic metal from leaching into tap water and poisoning children and adults.

But as Parker and thousands of people across Connecticut recently learned, there are a significant number of lead service lines installed before 1986 still supplying homes, apartments and other properties in the state. 

New data obtained by The Connecticut Mirror shows there could be as many as 8,000 lead service lines still in use in public water systems throughout the state — though that number is likely to change as water utilities continue to inspect basements, unearth pipes and comb through century-old records to verify how much lead remains in the ground. 

The data provides the first public look at how many people in Connecticut could be consuming water that travels through lead lines. And it highlights how that aging infrastructure is not distributed equally throughout the state. 

A majority of the suspected lead lines are located in lower-income neighborhoods in Bridgeport, Willimantic, Middletown, New London and Waterbury, places that have significant Black and Hispanic populations and are designated by the state as environmental justice communities.

Still, Connecticut’s wealthier suburbs were not spared entirely. More than 1,500 lead lines are also suspected in Greenwich, one of the state’s wealthiest enclaves.

The push to identify lead service lines in Connecticut is the result of a new federal regulation implemented in the aftermath of the Flint water crisis.

That federal rule, which was finalized in late 2024, requires public water utilities across the country — both large and small — to create an inventory of every lead service line in their systems and to replace all of those pipes within the next decade. 

The success of that mission, however, could depend on whether the new federal regulation can survive a legal challenge filed by the country’s largest water utility association and possible efforts by President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to roll back the new rule. 

A team of CT Mirror reporters spent more than six months reviewing records, analyzing data, knocking on doors and talking to residents and experts in order to understand the scope of the problem in Connecticut. 

While it is not yet known how Connecticut compares to other parts of the country, the numbers clearly show the state has a lot of work to do before all of the aging lead pipes are out of the ground. 

The data on the lead lines was contained in hundreds of reports assembled by the state’s water utilities and submitted to the Connecticut Department of Public Health, which regulates drinking water safety.

The properties flagged in that data include a variety of locations that serve young children, who are at the greatest risk of developmental delays from lead poisoning.  

The CT Mirror found examples where in-home daycares, a local Boys and Girls Club and older elementary schools were listed among the properties with suspected lead lines. That includes Waterbury’s Margaret M. Generali and Frank Regan elementary schools, which predominantly serve students of color.

The number of lead lines located in minority communities was expected. In fact, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicted much of the country’s leftover lead plumbing would be found in lower-income and minority neighborhoods, where there is older housing stock and a lack of investment.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal referenced that reality during a press conference in New London last year, arguing that the state and federal government had a “moral obligation” to remove every remaining lead service line.

“There is a real environmental justice issue here. It’s the dark side of this problem,” Blumenthal said while brandishing a lead pipe that had just been pulled from a home. “Much of this danger is determined by the ZIP code where a child lives, and all too often it’s a ZIP code that affects children of color.” 

Questions and concerns

The leaders of some of Connecticut’s largest water utilities said that further inspections and investigations will be required before they can get a true count of how many lead service lines remain in their systems. 

They also emphasized that they treat their water with what are known as corrosion inhibitors — compounds that help prevent service lines and older plumbing from leaching significant amounts of lead into people’s drinking water. 

Even so, several engineers and former regulators interviewed for this story warned that the aging lines pose a risk to people’s health. And they noted that treating the water supply does not guarantee that lead from older service lines won’t end up in the tap water. That’s especially true if the pipes are disturbed during sidewalk and road repairs or when the water in a building isn’t used every day, like in the cases of schools and daycares. 

“Corrosion control does help reduce the amount of lead that gets into water. It does not prevent lead from getting into water,” said Elin Betanzo, a professional engineer who helped uncover the Flint water crisis in 2014, which set off a public reckoning over lead contamination in drinking water. 

You can’t see, taste or smell lead in water. So the best way to ensure lead service lines aren’t poisoning people, Betanzo said, is to remove the pipes from the ground.  

That’s exactly what the new federal drinking water regulations, which were enacted under President Joe Biden’s administration, are expected to do. 

The EPA set a deadline late last year that requires any water utility serving at least 25 people to identify and remove every lead service line within the next 10 years — a monumental undertaking that is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars. 

In the meantime, utilities in Connecticut are sending out notices advising customers with confirmed or suspected lead lines to purchase water filters or to flush their sinks for several minutes before consuming the water.

Those notices have ignited concerns and sowed confusion among some Connecticut residents, like Parker. The Waterbury resident doesn’t understand why he is just learning that the water line for his home is potentially made of lead. 

“How can you give certain people lead-filled water and not even come and test the water or do nothing?” Parker asked. 

“Who’s checking? Who’s doing rounds and telling us?” he added. 

Gaps in communication

The CT Mirror spent months knocking on doors at properties with suspected lead service lines, and the reactions from residents at those locations varied from town to town and street to street. 

Some said they’d recently been notified that their service line might need to be replaced, while others said they’ve known for years that their property was supplied by a lead service line.

Bill Flaherty, a Willimantic resident, said he learned about the lead line supplying his house in the southeast end of town after utility crews unearthed it during a water main replacement years ago. But he said utility officials repeatedly told him not to worry about it because the water was being treated to prevent corrosion. 

Flaherty said he began to question that, however, after he received a notice in the mail last year informing him that utility officials wanted to replace his service line and the more than 300 other lead lines that remained in town.

Denise Deleon, a 48-year-old Waterbury resident, said she did not receive a notice that her apartment had a suspected lead service line, and she would remember seeing that type of information, since she has a history of dealing with lead exposure.

Years ago, while she was living in New York City, Deleon said her daughter began struggling to concentrate in school, and doctors found elevated levels of lead in her blood. As a result, Deleon said her family moved out of their home in the Bronx to prevent her daughter from being further exposed. 

While her daughter is now grown, Deleon was troubled to learn that her community may be home to hundreds of lead water lines. She worries what effect those lines could have on the kids she sees playing in her neighborhood. 

“I see a lot of children around here, and I’m concerned because I went through that,” said Deleon. “I think about the children around here and if it’s going to affect them the same way it affected my daughter.”

The gaps in communication surrounding lead service lines did not surprise Arthur Denze Sr., a lifelong Waterbury resident. People in Waterbury, he said, have been dealing with environmental hazards for decades, including concerns about air pollution and other contamination from old industrial sites. 

“Years ago, we fought tooth and nail against a lot of companies coming in and polluting the area,” said Denze, 87, head of a council that represents the city’s neighborhood associations. “I used to get out of work at night, and a smokestack was sending plumes up. You could see it all the way down the valley. We probably have some of the highest asthma rates in the state.” 

He said the city’s water department could be more proactive in informing residents about lead lines and potential health risks that come along with them.

“That should be discussed within the city. It’s a big item. God knows how much they used [lead lines] years ago,” Denze said. 

Bradley Malay, the superintendent of Waterbury’s Water Department, said the city sent out notices to properties with suspected lead lines earlier this year. It also provided information about lead service lines to every water customer in the utility’s most recent water quality report. 

Malay emphasized that the city is in the very early stages of identifying potential lead service lines, and he said it was largely relying on historical records, which can sometimes be unreliable or out of date.  

The city, Malay added, is currently developing a multi-year plan for how to replace the lead lines it finds, and he said the city intends to prioritize line replacements at schools and similar locations first. 

‘What do we have to do to protect ourselves?’

Many of the properties that CT Mirror reporters visited for this story were older, three-story walkup apartments and brick duplexes built in the early 1900s — places where tenants are also at heightened risk of exposure to lead paint.

The EPA published research in recent years that found census tracts where lead service lines are located often have higher percentages of renters, low-income residents and people of color.

Federal officials also produced studies that suggest the owners of rental properties are not always as engaged in the conversations and activities surrounding lead service line replacements, partly because they are not the ones drinking the water. 

That has not been a problem in Greenwich, however, where most of the suspected lead lines are supplying single-family homes. 

The news that hundreds of properties in Greenwich could contain a lead service line drew significant attention in the town, where the median household income is $180,000 per year and more than 60% of the housing is owner-occupied.

Jill Boullin, a homeowner in Greenwich’s southwest corner, said she was surprised by the letter she received from Aquarion Water late last year identifying her home as one the properties with a suspected lead line. 

“The next thought was, what do we have to do to protect ourselves?” said Boullin, who has two young children, ages 2 and 5.

Boullin, who closed on her house in 2024, said she quickly contacted the town’s state-certified laboratory to purchase a water testing kit. But by that point, she said, the lab had already been swamped by other homeowners who were seeking to verify that their water was safe to drink. 

“They were overrun with the amount of people calling,” said Boullin, who is now weighing whether to purchase a water filtration system for her and her family.  

Warnings

Many of the lead service lines flagged in Connecticut have been in place for more than a century.  

The data collected by water utilities shows many were installed between the 1870s and early 1930s, long before the federal ban on lead plumbing. 

Lead was used during that time frame because it’s pliable, which made it ideal for snaking under sidewalks and into basements. It is also durable, which is why the federal government estimates there are still between 6 million to 10 million lead service lines in the ground nationwide.

“Lead service lines and lead bearing plumbing have basically been forced on people,” said Yanna Lambrinidou, a co-founder of the national nonprofit Campaign for Lead Free Water. “People did not go to the store and choose lead service lines.” 

“Lead lines in many cases were imposed through local plumbing codes and local laws that made them mandatory, or that made them at least one of the acceptable materials until they were banned,” she added. “People were never really told what the health risks would be in essentially using a lead straw to pull in water to drink and cook with.”

Public health officials and advocates warned for decades about the threat those forgotten lead lines could pose to human health. There were high-profile examples over the years, including in Washington, D.C., that highlighted the damage that can be done to children and communities when lead service lines are allowed to corrode and poison people’s drinking water. 

But it wasn’t until after the Flint water crisis that federal officials acted by requiring utilities to identify and replace all of the remaining lead service lines in the country. 

Flint was a worst-case scenario. Tens of thousands of children and adults were exposed to high levels of lead after the city switched the source of its drinking water to the Flint River and failed to properly treat the water to prevent corrosion in lead service lines and other plumbing. 

In the end, the crisis resulted in a massive spike in the number of children in Flint with elevated levels of lead in their blood. 

Betanzo, who now runs a company that consults on drinking water safety, said Flint is a dramatic example, but it is also an indicator of what can happen in any community where lead service lines are allowed to remain in the ground. 

“Every time there’s lead in the pipes, there is a risk of lead in the water,” Betanzo said. “There is no need for anyone to drink lead in their water.”

“The issue in Flint is that we used children as our warning system,” she added. “And once you test it in children, it’s too late.” 

A quiet threat

Lead is not like iron and zinc, which people need trace amounts of. There is no safe level of lead in the human body. 

In adults, lead can affect kidney function and can contribute to cardiovascular problems. And in children, elevated lead levels can cause developmental delays, learning difficulties and behavioral problems. 

When someone swallows lead particles, the metal accumulates in the body. It gets stored over time in the blood, bones and organs. 

Lead-based paint, which was widely used on homes built before the late 1970s, is the biggest contributor to lead poisoning in children throughout the United States.

More than 66,000 children in Connecticut were tested for lead in 2023, the most recent year that data is available. And more than 1,600 of them had lead in their blood above 3.5 micrograms per deciliter, which is the new reference level for when cases get flagged. 

Local health officials also performed inspections on 96 different properties that year in an attempt to identify the source of the lead poisoning cases. None of those cases was attributed to lead in water. 

But public health experts said lead service lines represent another potential source of lead exposure, and the EPA estimates that drinking water can make up 20% or more of a person’s total exposure to lead.

Dr. Carl Baum, a pediatrician who has treated lead poisoning cases in Connecticut for more than 20 years, said infants who are consuming baby formula that is mixed with tap water are at the greatest risk from lead water lines. Another vulnerable population is pregnant women. 

Baum, the director of the lead poisoning treatment center at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, said the only foolproof way to protect infants and other people from lead service lines is to eliminate the source of potential exposure. 

Lead exposure, Baum explained, is often a silent disease, meaning parents and doctors don’t realize there is a problem until lab testing finds elevated levels of lead in a child’s blood. In Connecticut, the state has a universal testing requirement. 

All children between nine months and 35 months must be tested annually for lead in their blood. There are further testing requirements for children who are at heightened risk. 

“Unfortunately, we use kids as biological monitors,” Baum said. “We are allowing kids to go into homes where there is a probability that there is lead either in the water or in the paint and we wait until they get a lead level checked and then we say, ‘Oh, this kid is lead poisoned.’” 

David Cash, the former regional administrator for the EPA in New England, said the quiet threat that lead poses to children is why the Biden administration adopted regulations that require lead service lines to be removed within the next decade. 

“If we care about children’s health and neurological development and success in school, then we should care very much about this,” Cash said. 

“You know, having a kid who grows up with full mental and neurological abilities is great for that kid and great for their family,” he said. “But it’s also great for the community, great for the economy.”

‘We saw the writing on the wall’

Connecticut’s community water systems, which collectively serve more than three quarters of the state’s population, are at varying stages of pinpointing and eliminating their lead service lines.

In New London, contractors are already in the process of ripping out and replacing more than 500 lead service lines identified in the city. The city was celebrated in recent years — including at an event at the Biden White House — as one of the most proactive municipalities in the country when it comes to addressing its aging lead lines.

“We saw the writing on the wall after Flint that this was going to become a major problem,” said Joseph Lanzafame, New London’s Director of Public Utilities. 

Other utilities, however, are just beginning to research how much lead remains in their systems. 

Some of the state’s water systems told state regulators late last year that they were not sure what most of their service lines are made of. 

The Southington Water Department, for instance, classified 89% of its service lines as “lead status unknown.” The Manchester Water Department listed 81% of its service lines in the same category. And in Meriden, the city’s water division, said it was uncertain about 84% of its roughly 20,000 service lines.

Dr. Manisha Juthani, Connecticut’s public health commissioner, said those cases highlight the difficulty many utilities are facing, especially when there isn’t historical documentation about each service line.

“For some, it’s very challenging,” Juthani said. “They’re going back to records — literally, paper cards and things — from the 1800s.” 

William Norton, Meriden’s director of public utilities, said his team recently asked property owners to help document what their water lines are made of by taking photographs of the pipes where they enter people’s homes. And the utility’s employees are excavating several hundred service lines this year to confirm whether they contain lead.

Many utilities are also using computer modeling and machine learning to help predict where lead service lines are located, based on the age of a home or whether other properties on that street have a confirmed lead line.

Officials with the Metropolitan District Commission and Regional Water Authority, which provide drinking water to more than 800,000 people in and around Hartford and New Haven, said they do not expect to find a large number of lead lines in their systems based on the modeling they’ve done up to this point.

The MDC, which serves the Hartford region, told state regulators that it was confident that roughly 86% of its service lines were lead free. And the Regional Water Authority, which covers all of New Haven, similarly reported that at least 93% of its more than 125,000 service lines did not contain lead. 

Meanwhile, Aquarion Water, which serves a large portion of Fairfield County, is estimating it could find nearly 4,000 lead lines in Bridgeport and surrounding towns, based on its current projections.

A financial burden

Identifying the lead lines is difficult enough, but utility officials said replacing all those pipes is likely to be an even bigger feat. 

In many systems, water customers own at least part of the service lines — meaning utilities need permission from each property owner before they can begin pulling lead from the ground.

Utility officials said tracking down hundreds or thousands of property owners is an enormous challenge, especially in cities where there are a substantial number of rental properties and absentee landlords. 

But the biggest impediment to replacing all of Connecticut’s lead service lines is likely to be money. The EPA estimated in 2019 that it could cost roughly $4,700 on average to replace a single service line. 

Lanzafame, who is overseeing New London’s lead service line program, said the price has been even higher in his experience. 

Part of the cost of replacing lead lines in New London is being covered by a $6.9 million federal loan, a portion of which will be forgiven. Without that assistance, Lanzafame said, it would be far more difficult for the city to complete the work. 

“It is a big financial burden. I think that is one of the biggest challenges, especially being a distressed community,” Lanzafame said. “Without the grants and the funding that we’re getting from the federal government, we wouldn’t be able to carry out this project.” 

Federal lawmakers and the Biden administration set aside more than $15 billion through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help utilities across the country to identify and replace lead service lines. Connecticut received $99 million from that pot of money over the past three years, which the state is making available to water utilities through grants and low-interest loans.

But some groups are estimating the price tag for replacing every lead line nationwide could be up to $45 billion or even $90 billion — meaning some replacement projects may not receive federal support. 

Lambrinidou, of the Campaign for Lead Free Water, said utilities cannot rely on individual property owners to pay out-of-pocket for the cost of replacing their service lines. If they do, she said, those lead lines will likely remain in the ground. 

Many Connecticut utilities told CT Mirror they intend to cover the entire cost of replacement, but in order to do so, they may need to raise utility rates. The Connecticut legislature passed a bill this session that would allow investor-owned utilities, like Aquarion and the Connecticut Water Company, to create a surcharge on people’s water bills to cover the cost of lead removal projects. 

Lambrinidou, an affiliate faculty member at Virginia Tech’s Department of Science, Technology and Society, said that is also problematic. It would be far more equitable for the federal government to pick up the tab for service line replacements, she said.

“In many communities, it’s going to be the people — the victims — who are going to be required to pay, at least partially,” Lambrindou said. “If that’s not an environmental injustice, I don’t know what is.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jill Boullin‘s last name.