Racine EquiFlow Lead-Free Program 

In Racine, thousands of lead service lines still deliver water to homes and pose serious public health risks, especially for children and vulnerable residents. At the same time, many of the city’s underground water mains are decades old and approaching failure.

The traditional approach would have meant addressing the public and private side of replacements separately: tearing up streets multiple times, duplicating outreach efforts, and missing out on economies of scale. That model would delay protections for residents and create unnecessary disruptions for neighborhoods already impacted by aging infrastructure.

City leaders knew there had to be a better way—one that delivered safe drinking water faster, minimized community disruption, and used funding more efficiently.

The City of Racine partnered with CIP to design the Racine EquiFlow Lead-Free Program—a unified solution that replaces both lead service lines and aging water mains together, block by block.

This coordinated approach streamlines construction, reduces costs, and limits disruption for residents by avoiding repeated excavations. It also ensures long-term reliability of Racine’s water system not just at the tap, but throughout the distribution network.

Our team leads the full delivery lifecycle, including planning, verifications, funding support, outreach, and construction oversight. Using a performance-based contract structure which only compensates CIP once lines are actually replaced, the program prioritizes outcomes not hours billed, delivering health protections and infrastructure improvements that Racine families can count on.