The legislature is once again taking a ruthless stance when it comes to expanding our water infrastructure.
Photo: The use of lead water pipes goes back at least to ancient Rome. Photo over Wikimedia Commons.
No matter how jaded you are with Wisconsin politics, our state legislature’s refusal to deal with lead water pipes remains heartbreaking. This horror is often masked by the greater disorder in the state budget process, but government officials who neglect this issue are poisoning children. Not many political issues are as simple as “You poison children”. This is.
The human body has no use for lead. There is no safe amount of lead a person can ingest. But even though lead is a highly toxic metal, instead of flushing it all out, your body stores it. A little bit here and there adds up over time, and kids are especially vulnerable to the worst effects, including effects on their brain development. We as a society have made extraordinary, life-saving advances in phasing out lead in paint, gasoline and other popular products. Leaving it in one of our most important infrastructures is unscrupulous.
Congress and the Biden administration could make this a moot point with a $ 2 trillion infrastructure bill that includes $ 45 billion to replace all lead water lines in the United States – assuming the Congressional Democrats push the bill forward without watering it down too much, provided that Wisconsin Republicans can’t find an absurd way to turn the money down out of malice. Republicans have made a habit of standing idle on this simple public health and infrastructure issue amid the seizure of power and tangled Holocaust commentary.
In early June, the Legislative’s Joint Finance Committee rejected a proposal in Democratic Governor Tony Evers’s budget that would have allocated $ 40 million to help property owners replace lead pipes – the pipes that run from a public water main to a single building . Wisconsin news outlets, including Wisconsin Public Radio and Up North News, have reported on this while lawmakers grapple with the details of household evisceration. Republicans turned down a similar proposal in the state’s last two-year budget cycle, complaining that it sent too much money to Milwaukee, where most of the leading service lines are located.
The advances Wisconsin has made on lead pipes are insufficient given the scale of the problem. Federal, state and local governments have invested a few million here and there to solve a problem that is truly worth billions at least. We learned this week that Wisconsin is well on its way to generating $ 4.4 billion in excess tax revenue over the next three years. There can be no excuse for inaction. Legislators should tentatively provide the money to eradicate every single lead pipe we can find across the state, and then draw federal funding once the federal infrastructure plan is (hopefully) completed.
The state has taken the time to replace lead water pipes. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Wisconsin has about 176,000 of these, although the EPA has admitted that number is incomplete. Communities across the state are gradually replacing their senior service lines as the state uses federal funds to fund replacement programs. In addition, some individual cities have become creative. For example, Madison used revenue from cell tower leases and homeowner purchases to fund a historic effort to get rid of every leading service line in town. Green Bay recently followed suit, using its share of the leftover money from Lambeau Field sales tax. In 2018, then-Governor Scott Walker signed a bill making it easier for public water companies to pay for lead line replacements. (To cut a long story short, this used to be a legal headache as the service lines cross between public and private property.) This bill did not create new government funding for the problem, so it will still have a limited impact on utilities who do do not do. have no money left or are unwilling to raise their prices.
Even Madison’s water is not entirely lead-free. Lead is a naturally occurring element, which means it can contaminate our groundwater sources from the start. In places with lead pipes, various other chemicals in the water (including some that water utilities add to treat other contaminants) react with the lead, causing it to corrode and seep into the water over time. Attaching a filter to your faucet can help, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem of decaying and literally toxic infrastructure. Man is mainly made up of water. There is limited risk you can take when you drink it, bathe in it, and cook with it.
Even if you think we can manage the health risks properly, modernizing water pipes is a good investment. It would optimize our water infrastructure, pay people for materials, and pay people for work. The common wisdom in politics is that big infrastructure spending is hard to sell, a massive price to pay for something unsexy. But I think most ordinary people are more than ready to overcome this attitude. A nationwide poll on the Biden administration’s proposed $ 2 billion infrastructure plan suggests a slim majority of voters support it and a slim majority supports Biden’s plan over a Republican counter-proposal. .
Wisconsin Republicans are blocking funding for lead pipe replacements simply because they love any chance to treat Milwaukee as a punching bag and incite more resentment in what they believe to be “the real Wisconsin.” Milwaukee is a place full of people who have already written them off. But lead pipes and major water quality concerns belive simple city-versus-country narratives. It makes sense that Milwaukee is getting the lion’s share of the funding for replacing lead pipes, as more people, more buildings, and more infrastructure have been built here than people used to use lead pipes in new construction. But dozens of other Wisconsin communities large and small have lead lines in the ground. They all deserve safe drinking water and will all suffer as long as Wisconsin continues to neglect this problem.
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