The Biden administration accelerated the timeline for replacing lead pipes with a final rule announced Oct. 8 that calls for the identification and replacement of lead pipes within a decade.
The administration also announced an additional $2.6 billion for this effort, distributed through state drinking water revolving funds and added to the $15 billion funded through the federal infrastructure act. The final improvements to the lead and copper rule also require more stringent water testing and lower the threshold amount of lead that triggers remedial action to 10 ug/L from 15 ug/L, with the Environmental Protection Agency of USA also provides 35 million dollars in grants for drinking water. lead reduction measures.
“We are finally addressing an issue that should have been addressed a long time ago in this country: the danger that lead pipes pose to our drinking water,” President Joe Biden said in announcing the rule in Milwaukee , adding that he “hadn’t been.” given the national priority it demanded”.
About 9 million U.S. homes now receive water through lead pipes, the EPA says, with an estimated 367,000 pipes replaced since Biden has been in office, according to the White House. The final rule replaces a controversial rule from the Trump era, completed in 2020 and in effect starting in 2021, which extended the deadline for lead replacement by decades while lowering the acceptable levels of lead in water specified in the previous 1991 standard.
Biden in 2021 set aside $15 billion from the infrastructure act for pipe replacement and $11.7 billion through state drinking water revolving funds for pipe replacement and drinking water projects.
While that funding is “all helpful in closing the funding gap,” for the replacement, said David LaFrance, CEO of the American Water Works Association, the water company’s member organization says the actual compliance costs are potentially higher than $90 billion.
Still, LaFrance called the rule “another important step” in efforts to reduce lead exposure, adding that US water systems are “nearing completion of its initial inventories of the main service line,” under a previously established deadline of October 16. “Update these inventories over time, as required by the [final rule]is critical to ensuring continued progress on mainline elimination and building a shared understanding of where lead risks remain.”
Environmental groups praised the rule. “Lead contamination is a long-standing public health emergency, and the rule … is a monumental step forward in addressing the urgent need for safe and clean drinking water,” said Patrice Simms. Vice President of Earthjustice.
