Recent back-to-back neighborhood meetings in Bottineau and Windom Park included visits from city officials about the planned replacement of lead water supply pipes for those areas.
On Monday, Jan. 13, John Howes, senior professional engineer, and Marie Asgian, superintendent of water distribution, both with the Minneapolis Water department, and Jonathan Rossall, inspection supervisor for the city’s Lead and Healthy Homes team, discussed some of the project’s details with Bottineau residents.
Howes said about two-thirds of Minneapolis homes have had lead or galvanized iron water pipes replaced by copper, and the State of Minnesota’s goal is to get rid of all lead pipes by 2043.
There is a five-year plan to replace pipes in “Green Zones,” areas in the city designated in 2018 to “address the environmental justice overburden in North and Northeast Minneapolis and design and implement a plan of action to improve environmental and population health, and social, economic and environmental justice.”
The Northside Green Zone includes the Hawthorne, McKinley and Near-North neighborhoods and the western portions of Marshall Terrace, Sheridan, Bottineau and St Anthony West. The Northside and Southside Green Zones together have around 5,000 homes earmarked for line replacement. In 2024, the city replaced 400 lines and expects to replace 1,000 in 2025.
Howes said there’s no lead in the water treatment system, in the river or in the water mains, all of which are iron. The only lead in the system is in private service lines and private fixtures. “A lot of the older lines with old fixtures have some amount of lead in them, and that’s why we treat our water in a certain way that keeps the lead out.”
He added that peeling paint is most common source of lead exposure, and is more harmful, especially to children’s brain development.
Jonathan Rossall said part of his work is investigating sources of child lead poisoning. He recalled the water crisis in Flint, Mich., in 2014, when the city switched its drinking water source from Lake Huron to the Detroit River, causing pipe corrosion that released lead and other contaminants into the drinking water.
Rossall said a few years ago, his department undertook a pilot program where every lead investigation they did included water testing, “And over the course of 12 to 18 months, in all of our sampling, we never came across an instance in which we could connect the child lead ingestion to lead in our water.”
One of the factors in the replacement project is the cost-effective use of funds. If there’s a street reconstruction project, where there is resurfacing or sewer work, where the street is opened up, Howes said, “We try to make sure we get in and do all of those so that homeowners are left with a new service line in the new street, and we don’t have to get in there again; that’s a waste of dollars.”
On Tuesday, Jan. 14, the Windom Park Citizens in Action (WPCIA) welcomed both Howes and Rossall, who gave a similar presentation.
Howes said that everyone should have by now received notification if they have a lead service line. He noted that 55,000 letters were sent, and assured the attendees that “We in Minneapolis know our water and we know about the lead. We know our system pretty well, and the way we treat our water keeps any lead from getting into the water itself. It’s not really an issue with us, and not a lot is going to change. You know, a lot of these lines are 90, 100, 110 years old, and they’re still in service.”
Howes showed a map of the 2025 pipe replacement areas. The only addresses in Windom Park this year are around the Lowry Avenue corridor. Lowry Avenue is a Hennepin County street reconstruction project. Last year, the street was rebuilt from Central Avenue to Washington Street. This year reconstruction will run from Central to Johnson Street.
He said they want to have 2026 and 2027 replacement locations on the map. “Once we have our plan for where we’re going to go, we do plan to increase our count by another three to four times what we’re doing this year in 2026, so we’re ramping up at a pretty fast pace. We’re doing about 800 to 1,000 this year, and in 2026 we need to be at about 3,500 to keep pace with federal guidelines.”