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.
They don’t have to be dug up. The first step is chemistry - Flint was fine with lead pipes until they switch water sources to something with a different composition (ph I think - but there are other factors and we should get expert chemists to speak here not laypeople like us). Anywhere that lead pipes exist we need monitoring to ensure that the water doesn’t dissolve lead, once we have that in place the pipes don’t leach much lead and we can do a slower replacement when the pipes need to be replaced anyway.
We also have technology to put a plastic liner in existing pipes for much less than digging the pipes up. It doesn’t work for all situations, but when it does is a lot cheaper and should be investigated for any pipe that is expected to last a long time.
I hate this.
You already know just from the tone that fuck all is going to happen.
The answer is… do both. Fix the problem while finding ways to mitigate costs while ensuring the problem gets fixed.
Even with that there is still a nonzero amount of lead in the water. Source: my city that does exactly that and the test results they publish.