PITTSBURGH — Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Pittsburgh Friday morning to meet with members of the community and other leaders in Homewood to discuss the White House’s bipartisan infrastructure plan and how it could help replace lead water lines in the region.
In November, President Joe Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that included $15 billion allocated for the replacement of lead service lines across the nation.
The Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan, announced by the White House in December, was part of the infrastructure deal and will pull together federal agencies to work with state and local governments for the replacement and removal of lead infrastructure.
Harris arrived at the Allegheny County Airport around 11 a.m., where she was greeted by Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon. Arriving with her from Washington was Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan.
“Secretary Fudge and I, together with Administrator Regan from the EPA, have been working on this issue for quite some time, thinking about it deeply in terms of the seriousness of it and the impact in terms of what we’re doing to fix it,” Harris told community members.
From the airport, she traveled to the Community Empowerment Association in Homewood, to meet with community members and discuss Pittsburgh’s place in the nationwide efforts to reduce lead poisoning.
Harris held a round-table discussion with three community members. Kim Clark-Baskin and Gwendolyn Marcus, Pittsburgh residents affected by lead pipes, and Hanna Beightley, a Healthy Home Program Manager with the nonprofit Women for a Healthy Environment.
“I shared my family’s story of my 16-year-old son having elevated lead levels, which caused him to have headaches,” Clark-Baskin said. “And my 76-year-old father who developed respiratory issues as well as other complications.”
Through a county program, Clark-Baskins’ father received a complete lead abatement on his property.
Harris told the women that there were three principles impacting the need for lead pipe replacement.
“There’s the piece that is about equity, which is literally different communities are dealing with this differently based on what resources they have,” she said. “It is an issue that is about public health because of the harm, and then because of the harm, it makes it an issue that is also about education. Meaning, can our babies learn if they’re drinking from toxic water?”
Even at low levels, lead can cause long-term physical and behavioral problems for children, including decreasing IQ, hyperactivity, slowed growth, hearing problems and anemia, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We know up to 10 million homes in our country have lead pipes that are feeding the water that flows in their home,” Harris said. “We know that when it comes to lead paint, we're looking at at least 24 million homes that have lead paint. And those are the numbers that have been reported. ... There are plenty of folks who live in homes, whether they be renters or owners, that may be unaware there is lead in their paint or in the pipes."
More locally, about 80% of houses in Allegheny County were built before 1978, when lead was banned. Within Pittsburgh city limits, that number jumps to about 85%. This means large numbers of homes in the region could contain lead in their paint, pipes, soil and dust which could lead to problems in child development.
During the visit, Fudge told media members that she was announcing a new HUD grant totaling $520 million to address hazards in homes, like lead paint and pipes.
“We are announcing it here today because we know that this community has stepped up, in a way that so many others have not,” Fudge said. “You have started to attack the problem, and we have a long way to go.”
Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority began removing and replacing lead water lines in 2016 after it identified high levels of lead in the water systems.
In 2019, the company started adding orthophosphate into the drinking water supply to reduce the lead that was leaching out of the pipes into the water.
U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, who joined Harris on Friday, explained that projects like this were “beyond the scope of local governments.”
“This money’s going to come to Pennsylvania and we’re going to be able to do a lot more projects like this and our children are going to be able to breathe a little bit better and not be exposed to lead …” Mr. Doyle said.
In her remarks, Harris said that Pittsburgh is a “model of what can and will happen around the country.”
“In large part, the work that we are doing is in response to the advocacy that has been coming out of leaders like the leaders here in Pittsburgh, who have been demanding that we prioritize this as an issue,” Harris said.
At the community center, she was also joined by Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, Fitzgerald and Lamb.
“We’ve done a lot of testing with our health department and we know we have lots of needs, but we need partners,” Fitzgerald said. “We need partners with the federal government who are going to help us.”
Before she left Pittsburgh, Harris and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, visited the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill to pay their respects. Eleven people were killed by a gunman at the synagogue in 2018.
There, she spoke with Rabbi Jeffery Meyers and laid a stone on a bench in the courtyard outside the synagogue before returning to the airport for her departure.
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