Rhode Island is estimated to have between 75,000 and 120,000 lead service lines still in the ground, concentrated in older cities like Providence and Pawtucket, with a full replacement cost of roughly $1.8 billion and nearly half the state's service lines missing basic material records entirely.
This strategy responds to the EPA's 2024 revised Lead and Copper Rule, which requires every water system to map its lead pipes and remove them within a decade, by proposing a coordinated, inter-agency stakeholder engagement approach targeting a 20% annual replacement rate. The paper centers the civil rights dimension of the crisis, since the burden falls hardest on lower-income neighborhoods with the least capacity to track or fund remediation on their own.
Download the comprehensive stakeholder strategy.