A review of funding to states under the bipartisan Infrastructure Act to replace leaded drinking water service lines found at least two, Texas and Florida, used flawed data to get FY 2023 allocations.
The report, released Oct. 21 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general, concluded that about $2.8 billion in funding allocated by the agency under federal law for replacements were based on data that did not reflect the actual number of committed lines in these states.
“Every misallocated lead service line dollar is a dollar taken away from states that rely on federal funding to help communities at risk of lead-contaminated drinking water,” said EPA Inspector General Sean W. O’Donnell in a statement. “We have warned the [agency] repeatedly about the real and significant consequences of using unreliable data. EPA must fix these systemic flaws before more taxpayer dollars are misdirected.”
For fiscal year 2023, the EPA based its allocations for line replacements on each state’s responses to an additional questionnaire in the Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Assessment and Survey released in September of 2023.
The IG said the questionnaire was originally designed to provide estimated line replacement costs, not to allocate funds. “As such, [it] it did not have the rigorous internal controls necessary to support the quality and reliability of the data, and it did not implement the necessary internal controls after the purpose of the questionnaire … expanded,” O’Donnell said.
A data entry error resulted in an estimate 95% higher than needed, according to the IG. EPA corrected this error for Texas by FY 2024, but the assigned levels for Florida remained higher than the needs identified through the GI analysis. As a result, about $343.7 million in “questionable” appropriations were made in those two states, the EPA watchdog said, adding that funding for fiscal years 2025 and 2026 it could be biased if the agency does not address concerns about how the data is collected.
While the 2021 federal funding bill provides $15 billion for lead service line replacements, the total is far less than the estimated $50 billion to $80 billion said to be needed to replace all of these lines throughout the country.
In its formal response to the report, EPA’s Office of Water disagreed with its findings and recommendations, stating that the IG failed to consider the agency’s input in the audit development.
The IG “used incomplete and invalid evidence” to address the evaluation’s objectives and support the draft report’s findings and conclusions, wrote Bruno Pigott, the office’s acting administrator of water
EPA said the IG should have recognized that the LSL questionnaire redirected hundreds of millions of dollars to where the needs were greatest, something the Quadrennial Drinking Water Survey and Assessment could not have done .
But the agency said it shares the IG Office’s concerns about the unreliable reports provided by Texas and Florida and is evaluating further corrective measures.
Erik Olson, senior director of health strategy at the nonprofit advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, said he also has concerns about the accuracy of the data and has raised them publicly.
But not all of the blame lies with the EPA, he said. The agency sent data requests to thousands of water systems in all 50 states. But many have not fully met the requirements of the 1991 federal lead and copper rule, which required systems with high lead levels to confirm the number of existing lead service lines, Olson said.
