Water utilities
Principle 4
Involve Your Community in Decision Making
Increase participation by engaging with your community in dialogue and decision-making.
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Seek input from the community early and often
Community engagement is a critical element of any public health effort, including lead pipe replacement programs. Seeking input from your community early in the process will help you design an effective program that fits residents’ needs and avoids unintended negative impacts.
Engage the community to refine inventories
Engage the community in refining LSL inventories. Customers can help with material identification on the private side of the service line, which is often time-consuming and costly, especially for water systems with a large number of unknown lines. Some ways utilities can engage customers to complete LSL inventories include (see: Priority 1, Key Action 2).
Detailed instructions to residents
Detailed instructions to residents on how to identify the service line material and report it.
Online portals
Online portals make it easy for customers to upload their results and supporting documentation to verify self-identifications.
Pair with door-to-door canvassing or appointment systems
Pair with door-to-door canvassing or appointment systems to increase participation and improve customer relations.
Incentives
Incentives such as gift cards or credits on their water bill if they submit service line material data.
Treat the community as a decision-making partner
Consider the community as a decision-making partner, and involve them early in the process to build trust and learn about your community’s unique needs and challenges. Some ways you can engage with the community include:
Contract with community-based organizations
Contract with community-based organizations to facilitate an authentic, holistic understanding of individual and collective needs and challenges and reach those who are disproportionately impacted by lead exposure more effectively. Engaging the community with intention and thoughtfulness helps ensure all voices are heard and access to safe drinking water for all remains a cornerstone of the utility’s replacement program (see: Principle 6).
Create a community advisory committee
Create a community advisory committee to help you raise awareness of and participation in lead service line replacement programs. Committee members can help reach more people in more places, in their preferred language, and in a culturally responsive manner.
Communicate often, and provide updates
Communicate often, and provide updates about your plan to address the risks of lead service lines and program updates. Increased transparency on progress being made reassures residents and increases accountability. Consider offering multiple communication options—phone calls, emails, and texts—and let customers choose their preferred method. Increasingly, one-on-one texting is proving to be the most effective channel for quick, personal, and responsive communication.
Encourage customers to share their cell phone numbers and let them know you’ll use them only for direct, individualized communication—not for mass texts or automated campaigns. When handled with care, person-to-person texting builds trust and ensures customers stay informed in real time, much like a conversation with a neighbor or friend. This approach not only improves response rates but also fosters stronger relationships and community confidence in your utility’s efforts.
Welcome community input and feedback
Listen to your community and welcome input and feedback. Make space for your community to ask questions, raise concerns, and get the information they need to make decisions. Listening to your community will not only allow you to understand their needs and how to address them, but can also provide valuable information on what is and is not working in your program. You can also use this opportunity to show how your community’s input prompted program improvements.
Celebrate successes
Celebrate milestones with your community partners and residents to build stronger, lasting relationships. Recognize not only the progress of your lead service line replacement program, but also the broader impact—such as creating local jobs, developing workforce opportunities, funding private-side replacements, and protecting public health.
Share successes openly and acknowledge the vital contributions of community members throughout the process. By highlighting both program achievements and the tangible benefits delivered to individuals and neighborhoods, you demonstrate the true value of partnership and collective action.
Toolbox
Community engagement strategies
Community advisory committees
Key Action 2
Increase transparency & build trust
Make information about lead service lines and your plan for addressing them accessible to all.
Transparency is key to successful lead service line replacement. Residents need to understand their risk, the utility’s plans, and their role in the solution. Without their buy-in to replace private-side pipes, utilities cannot fully meet their goals.
Protect your community with proper water treatment and monitoring
Many lead service line replacement (LSLR) programs will require multiple years for the utility to replace all LSLs and remove the underlying risk from the distribution system. However, in the interim, utilities can take other immediate operational steps to mitigate risk of lead exposure including corrosion control treatment which was mandated in the 1991 Lead and Copper Rule.
Maintaining non-aggressive water that is scale-forming can be a critical barrier to lead exposure while LSLR programs are being carried out. While effective, if corrosion control is not managed correctly or if the water chemistry changes it can still pose a risk of lead leaching in the distribution system. Depending on the water chemistry, corrosion control treatment may still be needed even after all lead service lines are removed because in-home premise plumbing can still provide a vector for lead release.
Utilities should be transparent regarding the treatment approaches and barriers being used, like corrosion control, and acknowledge that they are stop-gap measures until LSLs can be removed from the system completely.
Communicate program expectations and project timelines
Communicate program expectations and project timelines so residents are informed about the steps and activities involved in the process – from inventories to replacement – when these are anticipated to occur, and what is expected of them. The utility can summarize this information in the form of frequently asked questions (FAQs), factsheets, or visual timelines. The utility should use multiple means of communication depending on location- and customer-specific needs to increase the reach of this information.
Make LSL data accessible and understandable
Ensure public-facing lead service line data and information are accessible and easy to understand. Some ways you can increase transparency, access, and clarity are:
Websites
Websites and online portals can help you build trust in your program by providing residents easy access to information on:
- What your utility is doing to address this problem and what residents can expect if their service line needs replacement.
- When LSLs will be replaced in certain neighborhoods and how much it will cost homeowners.
- How to check whether they have a lead service line 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 lead service line in their homes (e.g., appropriate filter use and flushing and lead line reporting).
- Where they can go to get assistance and additional information in reducing their risk.
Interactive maps
Interactive maps showing where lead service lines are present are a powerful tool to make information readily accessible and understandable for 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 actions to mitigate their risk of being exposed to lead in drinking water and to make decisions when renting or purchasing a new home.
Note
Press statements
Press statements and adopting a practice of proactively sharing information with local press can help increase the visibility of your replacement efforts.
Social media campaigns
Social media campaigns can help reach a broader audience and raise awareness of the risks associated with lead in drinking water as well as your lead service line replacement program.
Public education campaigns and door-knocking
Public education campaigns and door-knocking can build community trust in the program and increase participation rates by informing the public of your efforts to reduce lead in drinking water. Door-knocking along with community members and local organizations has been proven successful in urban and rural communities.
Think proactively and develop responses to key questions
Think proactively and develop responses to key questions your residents will likely have. For example:
- Who is paying for the private-side replacement, and what are the cost-sharing arrangements (loan, grant, reimbursement, some combination)?
- When will the utility replace lead lines in my area?
- How is the utility prioritizing its replacement projects and why?
- How long will my water be shut off and other services disrupted?
- How will excavation and construction activities impact my yard and landscaping and how will it be restored?
- How frequently should I expect the utility to visit my home as part of the replacement?
- Will service line replacement eliminate my risk of lead in drinking water?
- Am I required to replace my lead service line?
- How far in advance will the utility notify me that my property is scheduled for replacement, and what is expected of me?
- Is there anyone who can help me protect my health and reduce risk until my service line is replaced?
Toolbox
Dashboards & websites
Outreach & education
Key Action 3
Employ effective and accessible outreach tailored to your community
Effectively informing residents on the extent of the problem in your community and your plan to address it is essential to gain trust and access to people’s homes to remove lead service lines. This may require adopting a variety of outreach strategies to ensure your message reaches residents of different ages and with diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.
Be available to answer questions
Be available to answer questions. It is important for residents to know where they can go to find the information and help they may need to build trust in your lead service line replacement program. Some resources you may consider are:
Websites
Websites to provide detailed information about your program and where LSLs are in your system.
Online portals
Online portals that enable customers to schedule appointments and sign consent forms to facilitate the replacement process.
Help desks or hotlines
Help desks or hotlines to answer customer questions, schedule appointments, and coordinate between customers and contractors.
Community liaisons and partners
Community liaisons and partners such as local public health departments, health professionals, and community-based organizations. Partnering with trusted organizations enables you to genuinely understand your community and more effectively improve your community’s health through prevention, education, intervention, and community engagement. These partners can help:
- Communicate the health impacts associated with lead exposure
- Educate the community on what measures they can take to reduce their risk of lead exposure, including proper use of filters and when water should not be boiled (not an effective measure to remove lead)
- Answer questions related to lead exposure and your lead service line replacement program
Develop diverse and engaging outreach materials
Develop diverse and engaging outreach materials that can be distributed through various channels to increase information accessibility. Knowing your community’s demographics and where they tend to get information will help you develop the right tools. Ensuring that you keep your messaging short, simple, and clear can go a long way to increase community engagement. Some examples of outreach materials include:
- Door-to-door campaigning
- Door-hangers
- QR codes and flyers
- Websites, ensuring that they are optimized for tablet, computer, and mobile use
- Public outreach in spaces like schools, stores, and farmers markets
- Billboards
Make information accessible to all
Make information accessible to all. Ensure that all members in your community can fully understand your utility’s plan to replace service lines and what they should expect from it. You can do this by:
- Providing information in multiple languages if you have a larger makeup of residents that speak a language other than English.
- Providing information in ADA-compliant colors and fonts.
