About 20% of licensed child care facilities in Illinois have told the state they found lead in their water, though not all of those are necessarily fixtures used for drinking water.
, which serves families in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods, discovered it had a handful of water fixtures with high lead levels.
In recent years, a patchwork of government and nonprofit programs have ramped up, offering help with testing and mitigation. But the need still far outstrips the available assistance, especially for high-priority places like child care facilities. “Depending on what type of facility you’re in, we were finding that between 30 and 50% of providers were finding lead in their drinking water,” Pakenham said.
Williams says his group had “positive” conversations with the governor’s office about its proposal. As he sees it, it’s not just that children are especially vulnerable. It’s also about racial equity.