WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has vowed to replace lead pipes to ensure every American has access to clean drinking water, but policy experts say the billions of dollars he has committed may fall short of that goal.
The new infrastructure law steers $15 billion to lead service line replacement, the largest federal investment in the issue according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, but still a third of what Biden initially proposed for the program.
Lead contamination in water affects millions of homes across all 50 states and has been linked to a variety of health problems, especially in children. The federal money for lead service line replacement comes five years after thousands of children were exposed to lead through drinking water in Flint, Michigan.
Experts say $15 billion likely won’t be enough to replace every lead service line — a pipe made of lead that carries drinking water — based on estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency and independent groups.
“It definitely won’t be. We know that,” said Ronnie Levin, who served at the EPA from 1980 to 2017 and authored a 1986 report that sounded alarms on lead in tap water.
“It’s just multiplication as to how much it will cost to replace a pipe and how many pipes there are,” said Levin, now an instructor of environmental health at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. “There’s uncertainty as to how many pipes there are, but the estimates we have are probably low and not high.”
The EPA estimates that there are between 6 million to 10 million lead service lines in the country and pegged the average cost of replacing them at $4,700 per line in a 2019 report.
Advocates say additional federal funding and stricter regulations from the EPA will be needed to fully address the problem, which came under severe scrutiny five years ago when thousands of children were exposed to lead-contaminated water in Flint, Michigan.
The implementation of the new infrastructure law coincides with the EPA’s decision on a potential overhaul to the 1991 Lead and Copper Rule, which the agency is expected to announce by Dec. 16. Advocates want the EPA to use this as an opportunity to adopt a stricter standard on the amount of lead allowable in drinking water or to mandate removal of lead pipes over the next decade.
Biden has repeatedly touted the infrastructure law as a solution to the long-neglected problem.
“It’s going to create jobs replacing lead and — lead water pipes so every American, every child can drink clean water, improving their health and putting plumbers and pipefitters to work. How long have we been talking about that? It’s a gigantic issue,” Biden said the day after the House passed the legislation.
The uncertainty of the exact number of lead pipes stems from limited data at the state level with 23 states not tracking the number of lead service lines in their water systems, according to a July 2021 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.
The NRDC’s estimates put the number of lead pipes nationally at between 9.7 million and 12.8 million, higher than the EPA estimate.
“I think it’s clear that $15 billion is not going to be enough to fix the problem nationally,” said Erik Olson, a senior strategic director at the NRDC. “It’s not enough.”
A senior Biden administration official disagreed with the notion that the funding in the new law will be insufficient. “When we look at the whole bill, the goal is to replace every lead service line,” the official said, pointing to additional provisions in the law.
In addition to the $15 billion specifically designated for lead service line replacement, the bill provides $23.4 billion in state revolving funds that will also be eligible to go toward that purpose, the official said. Some cities, including Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, have already used an earlier round of federal aid under Biden for lead service line replacement, the official said.
The initial $45 billion proposal from the president this spring “was an upper range,” but the actual cost will be lower as states provide their own matching funds, the official said.
HIGH RATES OF LEAD PIPES IN MIDWEST
“It’s not too little. It’s just too late,” said Allen Overton, pastor of Christ Missionary Baptist Church in Flint, who observed the devastation lead contamination caused to his community.
Overton said many residents of Flint fled because they feared the water, while those who have stayed remain wary about feeding their children “poison” from their water tap.
“They’ll never trust a water faucet. They’ll never trust water coming from public facilities because they’ll always worry lead is in that water,” he said.
Overton said he hoped the money will flow to the communities that need it most as the EPA distributes it to states.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said the legislation sets “up a whole system where there was money carved out specifically for smaller communities that would have a hard time coming up with the local match.”
There are lead service lines in all 50 states, but the NRDC’s data shows the issue is most acute in the Midwest.
Illinois tops all states with 679,292 total lead service lines, according to the NRDC’s data, a reflection of Chicago’s exclusive use of lead pipes until the national ban in 1986. Six Midwestern states have more than 5,000 lead service lines per 100,000 residents: Wisconsin, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Iowa.
“This is one of the silent issues that does not get any attention and it would be difficult to even tell how much damage has been done,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., told McClatchy. “The bad news is I don’t think this is enough money.”
But the Kansas City congressman said he was hopeful that Congress will be able to include additional funds as Democratic lawmakers attempt to pass Biden’s other major spending bill before the end of the year.
Bruce Lanphear, a professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University in Canada who has studied links between lead exposure and cardiovascular disease, said reducing lead in drinking water will improve children’s cognitive abilities and reduce rates of hypertension, low birth weights and other health problems.
“Little shifts in lead exposure or air pollution can have a big impact on health outcomes,” Lanphear said.
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(Kelsey Landis of the Belleville News-Democrat contributed reporting.)
