It has been 35 years since Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act to ban the use of non-lead-free pipes in the country’s water systems. But for decades, lead pipes and lead paints have polluted millions of people in their homes, schools and daycare centers, polluting drinking water and producing toxic chemicals in the air.
On Thursday, the Biden government announced its plan to remove lead pipes and lead paint within the next decade.
“There is no reason in the 21st century why people are still exposed to the substance that poisoned people in the 18th century. There is no good reason,” Vice President Harris said during a speech to the AFL-CIO in Washington.
The White House estimates that between six and ten million households get their drinking water from lead pipes, and 24 million households across the country have lead paint.
The presence of lead in drinking water and in the air is particularly detrimental to children, as it can lead to developmental delays, brain and kidney damage, and other serious health consequences. And amazingly, half of all children under the age of six are exposed to lead at home.
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Vice President Harris addresses the AFL-CIO in Washington, DC Thursday on the Biden government’s plan to remove and replace lead pipes and paint, an effort funded in part by the bipartisan infrastructure plan that Biden signed last month has.
Exposure to lead also tends to disproportionately affect lower-income and colored communities, making this an environmental justice issue, Harris said.
The White House’s plans to tackle lead pipes and paint come under the bipartisan infrastructure plan that President Biden signed last month.
The administration says the action plan will extend to multiple agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. In addition to the physical removal of lead pipes and paint, the EPA will also better regulate test requirements for lead and copper.
$ 15 billion has been allocated to the process, but is that enough?
The removal and replacement of the country’s lead pipes was a promise Biden made in the primary election campaign. However, in its original infrastructure plan, the proposed funding for the project was $ 45 billion. After months of debates on Capitol Hill, the investment dropped to $ 15 billion, which some believe is not enough of a financial commitment.
Michael Drysdale, an attorney practicing environmental law, points out that removing lead pipes is an expensive effort.
“The removal and replacement of pipes is very expensive and the need is focused on poorer communities,” he said in a statement. “Although the recently passed infrastructure package allocated $ 15 billion to remove lead pipes, it will require about an additional $ 30 to 45 billion.”
Some have estimated the price would exceed $ 60 billion.
However, Ali Zaidi, White House deputy national climate adviser, says the government still sees the investment as a success.
“We’re working really hard to make sure we’re inventive and creative when we tackle this challenge,” Zaidi told reporters. “It means making sure we standardize the contracts, we use the best technology, we use data tools to bend the cost curve.”
Zaidi noted that nearly $ 3 billion will be used on lead pipe replacements as early as next year, and the government will also tap funds from the US lead pipe removal rescue plan passed earlier this year.
“The funds from the American rescue plan have already mobilized the removal of pipes from the ground,” he said. “These dollars will accelerate this effort.”
The replacement of lead pipes has already started in Flint
The city of Flint, Michigan has already started replacing its lead pipes. It has been seven years since it was first known that Flint residents consumed large amounts of lead in their drinking water – but were lied to by city officials.
The city has inspected thousands of lead and galvanized pipes since 2016 – and the process was extremely complicated.
In addition to the physical aspect of digging through the ground between gas pipes and tree roots, the data on which water pipes are lead, copper, or mixed may be unclear.
“It’s a big project,” Harold Harrington, a plumber who is replacing the pipes in Flint, told NPR in May, “and each of them is different.”
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