New federal lead rule mandates testing in schools
Federal environmental regulators released a longawaited update Tuesday to rules for detecting and reporting high lead levels in drinking water and guiding replacement standards for pipes that leach lead into water supplies.
The first major change to the Environmental Protection Agency’s lead and copper rule in three decades includes a new requirement that community water systems test for lead at child care centers and elementary schools.
Lead, a neurotoxin, is especially harmful to young children. Lead exposure can cause developmental delays, learning disabilities and behavioral problems.
Pennsylvania currently does not require schools to test their drinking water for lead, although it encourages it. Since 2018, the state has required schools to disclose results when they detect high levels in water.
The EPA’s new rules will require public water systems to do inventories to identify lead service lines and publicize their locations. When customers elect to replace their portions of a lead service line, water systems now must replace the public portion of the lead service line as well.
The rule includes a lower “trigger level” of 10 parts per billion when water systems will have to begin controlling the corrosiveness of their water and planning for lead service line replacements.
Communities that test above the 15 parts per billion federal lead action level systemwide now will have to replace 3% of their lead pipes annually, down from 7% in the prior rule.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the old rule was “riddled with loopholes and off ramps” that resulted in the 7% replacement standard rarely being met. In practice, only 1% of lines were being replaced, he said.
“With our new requirement of 3% we’ll see three times the replacement rate of the old rule,” he said.
But public health advocates said the Trump administration’s approach does not include the most important step to getting lead out of U.S. drinking water — requiring the removal of the estimated 6 million or more lead service lines that remain underground throughout the nation.
“To us it is a bitter disappointment,” said Erik Olson, a drinking water expert and senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The fundamental problem is we’re going to leave millions of lead service lines in the ground for decades, and that’s going to mean generations of kids’ health will suffer.”
Though the federal government will continue to permit lead pipes where lead levels are below 15 parts per billion, the American Academy of Pediatrics has documented lasting decreases in cognition in children exposed to concentrations of just 5 parts per billion. Even the EPA has set its maximum contaminant level for lead in drinking water at zero.
The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority is among the largest community water systems in the U.S. to struggle with lead-contaminated drinking water, but it is not alone in the region.
Between 2015 and 2018, PWSA was one of 11 southwestern Pennsylvania public water systems serving 535,000 people that exceeded the EPA’s 15 parts per billion lead action level at least once, according to a 2018 analysis by the Natural Resources
Defense Council.
Four systems in Allegheny County, one in Beaver County, two in Butler County, two in Lawrence County and two in Armstrong County exceeded the action level in that time frame.
After two consecutive rounds of testing showed lead concentrations below state and federal action levels, PWSA said in July that it was no longer required to replace 7% of the lead service lines in its system annually. Still, the authority said it would continue aggressive water quality testing and working toward its goal of replacing all lead service lines by 2026.
PWSA spokeswoman Rebecca Zito said the new EPA rules would not require major changes to the authority’ s approach, other than new notification requirements and sampling at schools.
Many of the revisions are already standard practice for the authority, she said.
“Insome instances our policies are more stringent. For instance, if a customer replaces their private lead service lines, the draft EPA rule requires that the public side is replaced within three months. We coordinate with the property owner at the time of their replacement and replace the public side of the lead service line at the same time.”
The EPA’s new rules also improve sampling protocols so that water tests at homes reflect lead levels in service lines and not the buildings’ internal plumbing. Previous sampling techniques often underestimated lead levels, EPA officials said.
If sampling at a home reveals lead levels above 15 parts per billion, the new rules require water utilities to take additional samples to try to identify the source and look for solutions.
The EPA said it planned to publish the final text of the rule in the coming weeks. It will go into effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register and will start to be enforced about three years after that.
Betsy Southerland, a former director of science and technology for the EPA’s Office of Water, said Presidentelect Joe Biden’s EPA administrator could still edit the rule if it is not published before he takes office. Otherwise, it would take about two years to propose and implement a rule with a lower action level and higher rate of replacement.