Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal Wouldn’t Remove All Lead Pipes

President Joe Biden has repeatedly boasted that the burgeoning bipartisan infrastructure bill in the US Senate will encourage the removal of America’s toxic lead drinking water pipes.

“This will mean that plumbers and pipe fitters will have to work to replace all of the lead water pipes in the country so that every child and American can turn on the faucet at home or school and drink clean water,” Biden said last week, “even in low-income households. and color communities that are disproportionately affected by dangerous lead pipes. “

But the bill doesn’t require water utilities to replace lead pipes. Instead, it’s giving a revolving fund $ 15 billion that utility companies can use to replace lead pipes if they choose – something that has only happened in a few cities so far.

“If utilities aren’t required to do so, we fear that many utilities aren’t,” Erik Olson, a water policy expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told HuffPost.

Biden originally proposed $ 45 billion for the removal of lead pipes as part of what is known as the American Jobs Plan, an early draft of the infrastructure bill. This total reflected the expert consensus on how much it would cost to remove the roughly 10 million lead service lines that connect the water pipes to buildings across the country.

Replacing a single service line can cost thousands of dollars as the ground in front of the building usually has to be dug to get to the pipe. Water utilities have insisted that they are not responsible for the portions of the pipeline that are within someone’s property line, making removal a huge problem for collective action.

The Infrastructure Bill, as drafted, would allow only $ 15 billion to go to the Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water state revolver fund for pipe replacement. The bill would not change the Safe Drinking Water Act to require utilities to replace pipes.

“Will it be enough to treat every lead pipe in the country? Probably not, but we will make great strides, “Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, told HuffPost.

$ 15 billion is certainly more than Congress ever allocated for lead pipe removal. Legislature allocated $ 100 million in 2016 to replace lead pipes in Flint, Michigan after the city suffered a monstrous surge in water lead – which state and federal officials initially fired despite the city’s corroded lead pipes spilling brown water into the Flint houses spat.

But $ 15 billion is probably not enough to get all of the pipes. The Council for the Defense of Natural Resources has estimated There are between 9.7 million and 12.8 million lead service lines in the 50 states, and the EPA puts the average cost of replacing pipes at $ 4,700, which equates to nearly $ 45 billion would be enough to get them all.

However, Biden has said almost every day that the $ 15 billion bill will do all the work.

“It will eliminate all lead pipes in America so people can have decent drinking water,” Biden said Monday during a Democratic fundraiser. A white house data sheet On Tuesday it said the bill would replace “all lead pipes in the nation”.

The White House insisted on Tuesday that the bill would eradicate lead pipes from the United States with less money than Biden himself originally proposed to HuffPost

“The bipartisan agreement will use this unprecedented funding to eliminate all leaded drinking water pipes and utilities in the United States – period,” said spokesman Andrew Bates, noting that the bill would give states an additional $ 11 billion for general drinking water funding that it could lead to lead pipe replacement.

Lead is a lethal neurotoxin, and drinking water flowing through lead pipes can lower the IQ of young children and increase the risk of miscarriages in pregnant women. Lead has been known to be unhealthy since Roman times, but it’s a soft metal that works well for making pipes, and in the 20th century the lead industry encouraged cities to use it for water pipes.

The Safe Drinking Water Act requires utility companies to test water samples from people’s homes and treat the water to make it less corrosive to lead pipes. Utility companies only need to replace pipes if their home water samples have excessive amounts of lead, which is a strong incentive for them to avoid testing in households known to have lead connections.

Under Biden, the EPA has suspended the pending revision of the Trump administration’s drinking water lead ordinance, which has been pending for years.

“These leads will last forever unless you take them out,” said Harold Harrington, a master plumber in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday during a conference call with the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters and the E2 green group of companies.

The groups went for one Analysis of the economic impact of Biden’s original lead pipe proposal, who found it would create and support 56,080 high-paying jobs annually for a decade. The proposal in the bipartisan infrastructure law would have less effect.

“Fifteen billion won’t get the job,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2.

Senator Cory Booker (DN.Y.) – the former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, one of the few U.S. cities to have replaced all of their leading service lines – said the Senate is wasting its chance to replace pipes nationwide.

“This is the time for America to do this,” Booker told HuffPost. “That even saves us money in the long run because children with lead poisoning are much less productive and have much higher medical costs.”

Booker lamented “the moral profanity of poisoning our best talent” in such an avoidable way.

“I live in a community that has been plagued by lead poisoning with lead paint and lead water for decades,” he said. “We have a moral obligation to do this.”

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