EPA finalizes rule to require removal of lead pipes in US water system

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday finalized a rule that will require the removal of all lead pipes from the country’s water systems.

“We’ve known for decades that lead exposure has serious long-term impacts for children’s health. And yet, millions of lead service lines are still delivering drinking water to homes,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in an agency news release announcing the finalization of the rule.

“With the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements and historic investments in lead pipe replacement, the Biden-Harris Administration is fulfilling its commitment that no community, regardless of race, geography or wealth, should have to worry about lead-contaminated water in their homes.”

Experts welcomed the change.

“The EPA’s new lead rule will begin to reverse the massive public health disaster of lead-contaminated tap water that has affected generations of our children. Every person has a right to safe and affordable drinking water, no matter their race, income or zip code,” Manish Bapna, president and CEO of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in the EPA news release.

But one advocacy group noted the change falls short because it doesn’t also require water utilities to halt the contamination of lead in schools’ drinking water.

“In setting a 10-year deadline for most utilities to replace lead pipes, the Biden administration is taking the most significant step to protect our drinking water from lead in the decade since the beginning of the Flint water crisis,” John Rumpler, clean water director for the Environment America Research & Policy Center, said in a news release. “But parents should know that the EPA has missed a major opportunity to safeguard water at school, where our kids go to learn and play each day.”

While most schools don’t have lead service lines, they do often have plumbing and fixtures made with enough lead to contaminate the water, the group noted. Installing lead-filtering water stations and installing filters on taps used for drinking and cooking would help solve that problem, it added.

Regardless, the new rule is an ambitious effort that will cost up to $30 billion over the next decade and will affect about 9 million pipes that send water to homes in countless communities across the United States.

Utility companies will be expected to cover most of the cost of pipe replacements, but there is $15 billion available in the 2021 infrastructure law to help them pay for it, the EPA has noted.

The need to get the lead out of America’s water pipes is pressing: In children, the neurotoxin can slow learning and damage the brain. In adults, it is linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, decreased kidney function and cancer, the EPA noted.

The issue first gained widespread national attention in 2014 in Flint, Mich., when a change in the water source and inadequate treatment and testing allowed lead to leach into the tap water of about 100,000 residents within a year.

While the new rule puts most of the financial burden of replacing pipes on water utilities, it does not require them to pay for the replacement of lead pipes on private property.

Tom Dobbins, chief executive of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, told the New York Times recently that his members would need technical assistance and more financial help from the federal government to comply with the new rule.

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