WAUSAU – City residents will see continued debate on the ongoing effort to remove lead service lines from the city's drinking water system.
The Common Council on Sept. 8 rejected an ordinance, 5-6, that would have mandated removal of water service lines likely to contain lead. District 3 Alderperson Terry Kilian, District 5 Alderperson Andrew Wiskowski, District 7 Alderperson Matt Hoenecke, District 9 Alderperson Vicki Tierney, District 10 Alderperson Lou Larson and District 11 Alderperson Bruce Trueblood voted no.
Immediately following the vote, Trueblood requested the ordinance be reconsidered at the Sept. 22 Common Council meeting with an expectation that city staff will develop a payment plan structure for a property owner's portion of a water service line removal for the Finance Committee and Common Council to consider prior to the meeting.
The ordinance was written to bolster an effort initiated in 2024 in partnership with Community Infrastructure Partners (CIP) to use U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants and loans to help remove an estimated 8,000 lead or galvanized steel water service lines across the city of Wausau's municipal water system by a 2037 deadline expected to be imposed by the EPA, Eric Lindman, director of public works and utilities, explained during the meeting.
The ordinance would establish enforcement mechanisms for nonrespondent property owners and payment obligations, Lindman said. Over 9,740 homes in Wausau have completed verification of service line materials and over 3,140 were replaced since 2024, according to the Equi-flow Lead Free Program website.
Over 30 properties have not responded to outreach efforts and most of those properties are rental properties with landlords or management companies, Lindman said.
Discussion of the ordinance stretched over an hour as alderpersons express concerns regarding the cost of replacements, the fairness of requiring property owners to pay for replacements after the last three years of no-cost replacements elsewhere in the city, and the implications of federal regulations requiring removal of lead service lines, according to discussion during the Sept. 8 meeting.
Several alderpersons requested more information about a possible payment structure for property owners who do not have their service line replacements covered by available grant or loan programs before they would approve creation of the ordinance, according to discussion during the meeting.
"I just want to make sure that we don't commit ourselves to compelling people to do something without having the process through which they could reasonably do that," Hoenecke said.
EPA grants distributed through the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources paid for about $35 million of lead service line replacement work in Wausau for a cost of about $15 million since 2024, Lindman said in the meeting. A funding gap in 2026 resulting from fewer available grant and loan funds was covered by the Common Council using general obligation debt.
The city and CIP estimate about 4,000 either lead or galvanized steel water service lines remain in the city's drinking water system, Lindman wrote in an Aug. 25 memo to the Finance Committee. The project removed 605 lines in 2024, 1,534 lines in 2025 and 1,414 lines as of July 2026, according to a July 13 CIP report to a Committee of the Whole.
The average cost for a water service line replacement is about $10,000 and as of July 2026 about 3,553 lines were replaced at a total cost of $34,211,284, according to the July 13 report. The city and CIP submitted a request to the DNR for $18.5 million to replace 1,310 lines in 2027.
Several factors including a reduced amount of available federal aid, reduced access to low-interest loans, the expiration of a three-year bid window that began in 2024, and remaining water service lines' locations in census tracts that do not qualify for higher amounts of public assistance are likely to reduce the amount of grants and loans the city receives for work planned in 2027, according to the July 13 report.
Aid estimates for 2027 from the DNR include about $7.9 million in principal forgiveness and about $10.6 million in low-interest loans, Lindman said in the Aug. 25 memo. About $4.2 million will cover the public-side replacements of water service lines while $6.4 million in loans will be unfunded on the private-side, or about $4,900 each.
CIP expects fewer than 2,200 homes in Wausau will have water service lines impacted by lead by the end of 2027, according to the company's July 13 report.
Erik Pfantz covers local government and education in central Wisconsin for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and values his background as a rural Wisconsinite. Contact him at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Wausau Daily Herald: What's next for Wausau's 4,000 remaining lead service lines?