New Jersey’s largest city showed how Buffalo could solve its lead pipe problem

Getting rid of Buffalo’s more than 100 miles of underground water pipes made of lead might be an even bigger dig than the new Buffalo Bills stadium or the Kensington Expressway tunnel project. 

But the city of Newark, N.J., has provided a road map for how to get there.

Old lead pipes, buried many decades ago and largely forgotten about, are a ticking time bomb in many cities across the country, with the potential to leach a toxic heavy metal linked to numerous health problems into drinking water. It has already occurred, infamously, in Flint, Mich., and in other communities.

It happened, too, in Newark in 2017, when the city’s corrosion control process faltered, resulting in high levels of lead in household tap water. Newark launched a new corrosion treatment system in response. Then, facing intense pressure from residents and a lawsuit by an international environmental group, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka decided it was time to remove all 23,000 remaining lead service lines in the city.

The city spent $190 million to get it done in a span of less than three years, using a block-by-block strategy in neighborhoods to replace as many as 2,200 lines per month. The final lead pipe was removed in 2022.