Milwaukee Water Works (MWW) is expanding its lead service line replacement program to prioritize neighborhoods with the greatest need. The goal is to replace 65,000 lead service lines by 2037.
How Does the Prioritization Plan Work?
The plan looks at three important factors to decide which neighborhoods should get lead service line replacements first:
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The number of lead service lines in the area
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The number of children with elevated blood lead levels (EBLL)
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The neighborhood's score on the ADI (Area Deprivation Index), which measures community challenges like income and housing
Each neighborhood (called a Census Block Group) receives a score based on these factors. The plan gives more importance to some factors than others, as follows:
- ADI score: 70%
- EBLL incidence: 25%
- Lead service line density: 5%
These scores are updated every year to reflect new data, such as changes in population, lead testing results, and completed service line replacements.
How Many Lead Service Lines Will Be Replaced Annually?
MWW will replace most of the city’s remaining lead service lines through its Prioritization Plan. In 2025, the plan will deliver 3,500 line replacements on top of the base-plan work (water-main and paving projects, childcare facility connections, and leak repairs). Now in its second year, the Prioritization Plan’s replacement totals will grow each year.
How Replacement Work is Balanced Across the City
Milwaukee Water Works assigns each neighborhood a priority score from 0 to 1,000 and ranks them from highest to lowest. Because 60 percent of the top-ranked neighborhoods are on the North Side and 40 percent are on the South Side, MWW plans its annual service line replacements to mirror that 60/40 split.
This approach ensures that replacement work is distributed fairly across Milwaukee.
Will my lead service line be replaced under the Prioritization Plan?
Property owners and residents can check if their address is scheduled for replacement on the interactive mapping site.
MWW updates neighborhood scores annually—reflecting changes in population, new blood lead test results, and completed pipe replacements. The ADI score is refreshed every two years after the U.S. Census Bureau’s survey.
Data Used for Prioritization:
- Density of Lead Service Lines
- Elevated Blood Lead Levels
- Area Deprivation Index
Milwaukee Water Works maintains an inventory of lead service lines. We use this data to determine lead service line density.
Elevated Blood Lead Level data is provided by the Milwaukee Health Department.
The index used by Water Works is called the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), developed by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health's Center for Health Disparities.
- The ADI combines 17 different criteria
- The criteria relate to income, employment, housing, education, and other household factors.
- It was designd to inform healthcare delivery and health-related policy.
- The data for the ADI comes from the American Community Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
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