Community Organizers
Track Progress and Adapt Strategies
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Monitor progress and pursue continuous improvement
Monitoring progress and adapting strategies are essential to the success of a lead service line replacement (LSLR) program and its community engagement efforts. Regularly tracking metrics, such as the number of lines replaced, community participation, and response times, helps identify what’s working and where adjustments are needed. Transparent reporting keeps residents informed and builds trust, while continuous community feedback ensures the program remains responsive to evolving needs and concerns. By learning and adapting in real time, utilities and community organizers can improve efficiency, strengthen relationships, and ensure long-term outcomes for all residents.
Establish metrics of success
Community organizers can collaborate with utilities and local partners to set transparent goals and success measures before implementing the lead service line (LSL) program. Key metrics to monitor include:
- Outreach and community event attendance
- Response rates for surveys and right-of-entry consent forms
- Total LSLs identified and successfully replaced
- Participation and awareness levels within priority neighborhoods
- Integration of community feedback into program decision-making
- Project milestones completed on time and within budget
Establishing these benchmarks early ensures alignment among stakeholders and provides a vital framework for evaluating progress and adapting strategies throughout the replacement process.
Monitor engagement metrics to ensure inclusivity
Monitoring engagement metrics is essential to ensure inclusivity and participation of all impacted communities. Regularly reviewing this data helps inform adjustments to outreach and other lead service line replacement (LSLR) strategies, ensuring that all communities, especially those historically excluded, have meaningful opportunities to participate and benefit. There are several aspects of an LSLR campaign that can be measured and monitored for impact:
Track participation
Monitor who is participating in the LSLR program (e.g., by geography, language, race or ethnicity, income level, or housing status) to identify which groups may be underrepresented.
Identify barriers to participation
Look for obstacles that limit participation, such as language barriers, income level, or distrust, to identify groups that may be underrepresented, especially in neighborhoods with low enrollment. Collaborate with the water utility to create targeted solutions.
Collect engagement data
Use event attendance data, surveys, and digital engagement metrics to understand who is being reached and whether engagement efforts reflect the broader community.
Measure outreach effectiveness
Assess whether your messaging and engagement activities are raising community awareness and understanding of lead exposure risks, available protective actions, and the replacement program.
Evaluate engagement outcomes
Conduct pre- and post-engagement surveys to determine if specific interventions are improving community awareness and confidence in the replacement process. Consider gathering feedback from community volunteers to ensure impacted communities are represented.
Reflect and refine strategies
Collaborate with the utility to review participation metrics, identify gaps, and refine outreach approaches. Use findings to boost participation, better reach underrepresented groups, and strengthen program participation over time.
Key Action 2
Support progress tracking through transparency
Keep your community informed with regular updates
Partner with your water utility to help ensure information on project progress is timely, clear, and reaches everyone who needs it, building trust and accountability in the process.
Ensure the utility communicates regularly and provides updates on its plan to address lead service line (LSL) risks and program updates, and that this information is publicly available and easy to access. Water utilities can inform residents about completed or planned replacements through websites and dashboards. Encourage water utilities to offer multiple communication options—phone, email, and text—and let customers choose their preferred method. Increasingly, one-on-one texting with residents and customers is the most effective channel for quick, personal, and responsive communication.
When appropriate, encourage residents to share preferred contact information, so they can receive timely updates and ask questions throughout the lead service line replacement (LSLR) process. Broad outreach tools such as automated alerts and mass communications may be necessary for large programs; personalized communication, such as one-on-one phone calls, text messages, or follow-up conversations, can improve transparency and participation.
Create feedback loops that drive program improvements
Elevate residents’ voices and ensure their perspective can shape how water utilities plan and carry out lead service line replacement (LSLR). Building strong feedback loops can help utilities adapt their strategies, address concerns more effectively, strengthen trust, and move faster toward solutions. Ways to collect community feedback include:
Host multiple open houses, listening sessions, and forums
Provide safe, accessible spaces, both virtual and in-person, where residents can share their experiences, ask questions, and raise concerns. Summarize themes and share them back with utilities to guide program adjustments. When possible, provide childcare to help ensure participation by families with young children, who are among the most vulnerable to lead exposure.
Collect and incorporate ongoing feedback
Use surveys and one-on-one conversations at community events to capture residents’ perceptions of various aspects of the LSL program. Encourage the utility to use tools such as complaint forms, feedback portals, and community issue trackers to continuously gather feedback. Translate these insights into actionable recommendations to improve the utility’s LSL implementation plan across cost, construction, communications, and timelines.
Close the loop with transparency
Report back to your community at specific milestones and timelines on how their input is being used. Reporting can be at a community meeting, postcards, emails, or even through social media—Facebook, Instagram, Nextdoor, and WhatsApp. Highlight program changes or new resources that resulted from community feedback. This reinforces trust and shows that engagement leads to real impact.
Encourage information accessibility
Partner with water utilities to ensure public-facing lead service line (LSL) data and information are accessible and easy to understand via a dedicated webpage on the utility website. Public-facing trackers and resources not only increase transparency but also help residents understand risks, plan, and take protective actions. Community organizers can help ensure increased data transparency, access, and clarity by supporting and co-developing:
Websites and online portals that help build trust in the program by providing residents easy access to information on:
- What the utility is doing to address this problem and what residents can expect if their service line needs to be replaced.
- When LSLs will be replaced in certain neighborhoods, and how much it will cost homeowners.
- How to check whether they have an LSL in their home.
- How to determine their risk of lead exposure in drinking water based on inventory or water quality data collected by either the customer or the utility.
- What steps can they take to reduce their risk if they suspect a LSL in their homes (e.g., appropriate filter use, flushing, and lead line reporting).
- Where can they go to get assistance and additional information to reduce their risk
Interactive maps showing where LSLs are present are a powerful tool for making information readily accessible and understandable to residents. This information allows:
- Utilities to communicate where risks are present and why they may prioritize certain areas for replacement
- Residents to better understand and take action to mitigate their risk of lead exposure from drinking water, and make informed decisions when renting or purchasing a new home.
Note: If your utility serves more than 50,000 people, it is required to make preliminary address-specific information about the locations of lead service lines publicly available in October 2024 under the federal Lead and Copper Rule Revisions. Inventories must be finalized by 2027. Make sure your utility is aware that:
- Press releases and proactive media engagement increase visibility and community awareness.
- Social media campaigns can help reach a broader audience and raise awareness of the risks associated with lead in drinking water and your lead service line replacement (LSLR) program.
- Public education campaigns and door-to-door outreach, especially in partnership with local organizations and community leaders, build trust and encourage participation.
When utilities and community organizations work together sincerely, they enable clearer communication, stronger participation, and a more transparent and efficient LSLR program, thereby improving public confidence and drinking water safety (see Principle 2).
Share lessons learned and program improvements
Community organizers can help utilities build trust and accountability by regularly sharing program progress, lessons learned, and improvements with the community. Tools such as newsletters, community meetings, social media updates, dashboards, and interactive maps can be used to share information on replacement progress, outreach activities, and community engagement efforts.
Work with your utility to demonstrate how community feedback has influenced decisions and shaped program improvements. Sharing both successes and challenges can strengthen transparency, demonstrate responsiveness, and help maintain community participation throughout the replacement program. This information can be shared in joint reports and presentations to local elected officials.