Delivering a world-class lead replacement programme: Pittsburgh Water’s story
For many utilities, lead service lines are the quiet legacy problem everyone knows they’ll have to tackle “one day”. For Pittsburgh Water, that “one day” arrived abruptly in 2016 – in the full glare of public scrutiny, with Flint, Michigan still dominating headlines.
In this episode of the Exec Exchange, host Dr Piers Clark talks to Will Pickering, Chief Executive at Pittsburgh Water, about how the organisation went from regulatory crisis to delivering one of the most ambitious lead service line replacement programmes in the United States.
From political science to pipes and public trust
Will didn’t start life as a water engineer. He studied political science in California and thought he’d become a lawyer – until exposure to real-world attorneys cured him of that idea. Instead, he was drawn into local government and public policy, and eventually into water and wastewater.
After several years at DC Water – including during its own high-profile lead issues in the early 2000s – Will moved to Pittsburgh in 2016 as head of communications. It was, as he puts it, “a very interesting time” to join.
The utility had just:
- Exceeded the US lead action level (15 parts per billion), returning results around 20–21 ppb
- Dismissed its executive director, with governance and performance under question
- Been pulled into the national conversation created by the Flint lead crisis
Within a few years, Will would move from managing the message to leading the entire organisation.
When corrosion control fails
Unlike Flint, Pittsburgh did not change its source water. The problem lay in its corrosion control strategy.
The utility had long relied on soda ash and lime. By 2016, it was clear that approach simply wasn’t protecting customers: lead was leaching from ageing service lines into drinking water.
The path forward had two essential pillars:
- Fix the chemistry – secure approval and facilities to move to orthophosphate dosing, the proven corrosion control workhorse in many US cities.
- Remove the lead – design and deliver a large-scale lead service line replacement programme, not just to regain compliance, but to eliminate the risk from the system.
Getting the permits and infrastructure in place for orthophosphate took time. In parallel, Pittsburgh Water began planning a physical replacement effort that would deliberately go beyond the bare minimum required by regulation.
The hard decision: replacing what you don’t “own”
In Pittsburgh, as in many US cities, responsibility for the lead service line is split:
- The public side: from the water main in the street to (typically) the curb
- The private side: from the curb into the property – owned by the customer
Legally, Pittsburgh Water could have restricted its effort to the public side and left the rest to homeowners.
Technically, they knew better.
Partial replacements can actually increase lead exposure at individual properties, by disturbing existing scales and leaving lead-behind pipework inside the boundary. Ethically and operationally, it made no sense.
So the utility took a bold position:
When we find a lead service line, we replace all of it – public and private – and we pay.
Internally, this triggered all the predictable worries: legal liability, precedent, potential pushback from the plumbing trade. Externally, it landed exactly as you’d hope: as a clear signal that the utility was putting public health and trustahead of narrow interpretations of ownership.
In dozens of community meetings, Will can count on one hand the objections he heard to that approach.
From compliance to complete removal
By summer 2020, Pittsburgh Water’s orthophosphate system was online and effective. The utility was back in compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule.
They could have stopped there. They didn’t.
Instead, they committed to full removal of all known lead service lines by 2027. To date, the utility has:
- Replaced roughly 12,500 public lead service lines
- Replaced the matching private-side lines wherever they’re found
- Built a dedicated customer engagement and scheduling team to coordinate thousands of in-home visits
- Leveraged federal funding, particularly through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, more aggressively than any other water utility in Pennsylvania
There’s a practical side benefit too: Pittsburgh Water uses each access to the basement to modernise meters (e.g. AMI)and tidy up legacy issues in one visit.
The programme is now mature enough that other utilities regularly come calling. Will’s team fields enquiries from around a dozen organisations a year – and they share everything: design choices, data, engagement strategies, and the bruises picked up along the way.
No trade secrets. Just sector learning.
What other utilities can take from Pittsburgh’s journey
You don’t have to be dealing with lead to recognise the parallels. For any utility facing a long-tail infrastructure risk, there are some clear lessons in Pittsburgh’s story:
1. Don’t hide behind the asset boundary
“Public side only” is often legally defensible and operationally tempting. It rarely passes the public-interest test – and in some cases, as with partial lead replacements, it can make things worse.
2. Put community-facing capability on equal footing with engineering
Lead replacement isn’t just main replacement with different fittings. Technically