The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it will spend $3 billion to help states and territories identify and replace lead water pipes.
“The science is clear, there is no safe level of lead exposure, and the primary source of harmful exposure in drinking water is through lead pipes,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said, announcing the funding Thursday in an agency news release.
Lead poses serious health risks and can cause irreversible brain damage in children.
The funding announced Thursday is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021. It sets aside $15 billion overall to identify and replace lead pipes.
With the exception of some moronic fiscal managers in Flint, it has been solved since the 90s. The Lead and Copper rule dates to the early 90s and required regular testing and action. Most utilities started adjusting PH and adding a lead corrosion inhibitor called orthophosphate. That dropped lead levels to zero most places.
Flint didn’t do that, so here we are. Also worth noting it was banned for new connections in 1986, though many cities banned it decades earlier. My own city banned lead in 1954, but because we’re an old city, we have 140,000 still out there. That’s over $1 billion (probably twice that by the time we’re done) for just my one city alone. Getting rid of lead will take even more money than this.
The problem is a little more widespread than just Flint. 9% of American water pipes still have lead in them.
Florida is leading the charge.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with-the-most-lead-pipes
But what I am saying is with proper treatment, the lead pipes are not a problem. Lead paint is a far larger issue for lead poisoning, but little is being done about that.
There’s been multiple laws passed about lead paint. One is like called the lead paint act or something, hang on.
Here it is, from 1992: https://www.epa.gov/lead/residential-lead-based-paint-hazard-reduction-act-1992-title-x
To reduce the hazard of lead-base paint.
The issue is not that if the UD had different pipes then they have, then lead pipes wouod not be a problem.
The issue is that almost 10% of the pipes in the US are still lead and no amount of lead is safe for human consumption, especially youth physiological development.
And there has been laws and regulations passed on lead pipe, too. Lead levels have been monitored and action taken for decades. And considering there is still a ton of lead paint out there, your law didn’t do much.
The issue is, there is not the contractors or materials to get it done. It costs ~$8,000 each now, and will only go up as utilities compete for those resources. We have an estimated 9.2 million lead pipes. The cost is likely to be over $100 billion. Even with $15b from the infrastructure law and this $3b, this is massively underfunded.
It’s also a stupid way of funding. Most of these lead pipes are attached to old water mains. When you replace the main, you also replace the connections. For a small marginal cost, you could also replace the old water main. But the EPA doesn’t allow these funds to be spent that way, and as I said, they are not providing enough money anyway. So we will be left with new connections on old, failing water mains. Stupid.
And in 15 years and lead pipe is gone, people will still blame water while ignoring the lead paint homeowners and landlords STILL have not removed.
You are confused.
This lead paint, hazard reduction law was not my law. It was passed by the 102nd Congress.
Your further complaint is that this measure will not solve all of the problem?
Is your implication that we should not fix any lead pipes because there is a potential that not all lead pipes can be fixed simultaneously?
I don’t know if this is going to blow your mind, but even if Congress provided as much money as you personally want to devote to this problem that you said doesn’t matter, there would still be a timeline between the first pipe being replaced or refitted versus the last pipe being replaced or refitted.
Even if they went with your plan, which I’m unaware has been considered, it still wouldn’t happen instantaneously.
You may have to manage your expectations and base your complaints on what is actually happening rather than what could possibly go wrong if something that is not happening does happen.
This is the same conservative argument against Green energy and replacing the infrastructure in the United States, or the funds Biden has provided for lgbtq legal allocation.
Yes, biden haven’t provided a gazillion dollars for civil rights movements to access, but Biden is providing significant funding for civil rights movements.
Perfect is the enemy of good, especially if your definition of perfect is based on your individual guesstimates.
No, my thought is we need to do it at a reasonable deliberate pace that also replaces the failing cast iron water mains. 10 years is far too tight a timeline without massive costs and major employee stress. This simply isn’t even a good plan, it’s knee jerk reaction.
And I can tell you, I am a longtime engineer for a water company. I am getting thrown a ton of extra work for no additional compensation. We’ve seen massive departures to other sectors from my fellow fed up employees.
And frankly I’m upset that lead paint is off the hook. No mandate to completely remove it. No massive fines for failing to get rid of that. And in my city, that’s the actual cause of lead poisoning.
Your tree is more important to you personally than the forest, but that isn’t a a valid reason to argue against positive and necessary infrastructure refurbishment.
Of course you are right to be angry that there hasn’t been a comparable current funding measure passed for lead paint for your city yet, but that doesn’t take anything away from the good that replacing lead pipes will do.
And you ignore all the negatives of this plan because there are positives, so long as someone else does the work and someone else pays for it (at least until you get pissed your water bill went up 200% because federal funding ran out). And I’m betting people will be mad when their 120 year old water main starts breaking constantly because we didn’t bother to replace it when we were digging up the street anyway.