President Joe Biden is finalizing an aggressive approach to guarantee that drinking water is safe for all Americans by imposing a 10-year deadline on cities nationwide to replace their lead pipes, a decade after the Flint, Michigan, water crisis raised concerns about the ongoing dangers of lead in tap water.
In the last month of a close presidential race, Biden is slated to unveil the final Environmental Protection Agency regulation on Tuesday in Wisconsin, a swing state. The statement draws attention to a topic that Kamala Harris championed both as a vice president and during her campaign for president: clean drinking water. The prior government of President Donald Trump replaced the previous rule, which was more lax and did not mandate that lead pipes be replaced everywhere.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters on Monday that Biden and Harris feel that ensuring that everyone has access to safe drinking water is “a moral imperative.” We are aware that more than 9 million old lead pipes in our nation are still used to supply water to residences. However, the evidence has been crystal apparent for decades: our drinking water has too much lead.
The regulation is the greatest update of lead-in-water limits in almost three decades. Lead is a neurotoxin that can result in a variety of illnesses, including behavioral issues and brain damage. Lead is a heavy metal that is used in paints, pipes, ammunition, and many other things. Lead reduces IQ scores in youngsters, delays their growth and elevates blood pressure in adults.
According to EPA estimates, the stronger threshold will save up to 1,500 early heart disease deaths annually and prevent up to 900,000 low birthweight babies.
The new rule, which is more stringent than the one that was proposed last autumn, mandates that water systems make sure that lead concentrations do not beyond a 10 parts per billion “action level,” as opposed to the current norm of 15 parts per billion. In the event that elevated lead levels are discovered, water utilities are required to repair all lead pipes while also educating the public about health-protective measures, such as using water filters, and reducing lead exposure.
Urban regions with lower incomes are typically more affected by lead pipes. The majority of the population is concentrated in the nation’s older, industrial areas, which include big cities like Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit, and Milwaukee. On Tuesday, Biden and Regan will declare the criteria in these locations.
According to the EPA, the new regulation also modifies the method for measuring lead levels, which may greatly increase the number of towns and water systems that are determined to have high lead levels.
Through the bipartisan infrastructure package, the government is providing an additional $2.6 billion for drinking water infrastructure to assist towns in complying. A $35 million competitive grant program to lower lead levels in drinking water is also being offered by the government.
Water utilities will have three years to get ready before the ten-year timeline begins. A few localities that produce a lot of lead pipes could be granted more time to comply with the new requirement.
According to the EPA, Milwaukee has the fifth-highest concentration of lead pipes in the country, where Biden will be making his statement. There, officials are replacing lead pipes more quickly and are aiming to remove all lead pipes in ten years instead of the original sixty. They are doing this by using funds from the federal infrastructure bill.
Removing lead pipes drastically lowers the likelihood of a disaster since they can corrode and pollute drinking water. Lead levels in Flint’s tap water increased when the city’s drinking water supply was changed more than ten years ago due to increased corrosiveness. Among the many places that have battled persistently high levels of lead pollution are Newark, New Jersey; Benton Harbor, Michigan; and Washington, D.C. Flint probably the most well-known example.
The EPA passed the first lead and copper drinking water rule more than thirty years ago. Although the regulations featured loopholes that prevented communities from taking serious action when lead levels grew too high, they have greatly decreased the amount of lead in tap water.
“I think there is very broad support for doing this. Speaking broadly about the EPA’s efforts to replace lead pipes prior to the official announcement, Erik Olson, a health and food expert at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “Nobody wants to be drinking lead-contaminated tap water or basically sipping their water out of a lead straw, which is what millions of people are doing today.”
The lead pipes will be extremely difficult to remove from the earth. Although the entire cost of replacing lead pipes in cities would be several times higher, the infrastructure law enacted in 2021 gave $15 billion to assist with the replacement. The mandate coincides with the Biden administration’s proposal for stringent new drinking water regulations for persistent chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Even while these regulations will cost billions of dollars, they will also promote public health.
When the proposed regulation was introduced, the industry organization American Water Works Association stated that it supported the EPA’s intentions but cautioned that costs could be too high.
Locating the lead pipes is another challenge. Many cities lack precise records indicating their whereabouts. This month is the deadline for first pipe inventory, and some communities have said that they are unsure of the materials that make up their pipes.
