Article Written by Maureen Cunningham and Olya Egorov 25th February 2021 “We move Heaven and earth,” says Montana Birt. A transplant from Georgia, Birt is a pastor in a local church in Thorp, Wisc., the smallest of cities with a population of just more than 1,600. His more earthly endeavor, however, involves digging up and replacing lead pipes that threaten to poison his neighbors’ water in Thorp and in Eau Claire, Wisc., about 40 miles west. We met Birt in the course of examining lead service line replacement programs in municipalities across the country. Big cities like Newark , N.J., or Denver often grab the headlines for their programs, but we set out to learn what smaller municipalities with lead pipes are doing to replace them.