The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI) ambitiously required every public water system in the country to replace all lead service lines within 10 years. The LCRI’s preamble “strongly encourages” water systems to absorb the cost of replacing privately owned lines into general water rates; that is likely to generate ratepayer opposition, litigation, and political pressure for rollback. A better answer is the surcharge-lien system, a financing structure in which the water system advances the replacement cost, attaches an enforceable lien to the property whose line was replaced, and recovers the expenditure through property tax enforcement laws. This system applies tools that are universal in American municipal finance, and is available under the laws of every state with a meaningful lead service line inventory. For every water system in every state, it is what equity demands. This Article uses New York as the most fully developed example to demonstrate that the surcharge-lien system is available for virtually every governmental structure in the state, and provides an analytical template for practitioners in every state.