EPA DETAILS EFFORT TO TIGHTEN LEAD RULES

The Biden administration took steps Thursday aimed at reducing lead in drinking water, announcing plans to release $2.9 billion in infrastructure bill funds next year for lead pipe removal and impose stricter rules to limit exposure to the health hazard.

Vice President Kamala Harris made the case for the administration’s push to eliminate every lead service line in the country, reiterating the administration’s pledge that the effort would create jobs across the country and begin to undo the harm pollution has caused in poor, often minority communities.

“The challenge that we face is, without any question, great. Lead is built into our cities. It is laid under our roads and it is installed in our homes,” Harris said in remarks at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington.

The White House estimates between 6 million and 10 million U.S. households and 400,000 schools get water through lead service lines, which connect buildings to the water main and can leach particles of the neurotoxin into drinking water and potentially cause severe developmental and neurological issues.

While the EPA considers how to strengthen the nation’s lead-in-water rules, it will allow the previous Trump administration’s overhaul of lead regulations to move forward, officials said Thursday. The Biden EPA’s requirements are expected to be finalized by 2024, and would require the replacement of remaining lead drinking water pipes “as quickly as is feasible.”

The Trump-era rule said public water systems should replace 3 percent of their lead service lines each year if lead levels exceed 15 parts per billion.

That rate is lower than the previous 7 percent standard established in 1991, but Trump administration officials said at the time that the rule eliminated loopholes that allowed water systems to avoid removing pipes and would actually make the replacement process faster.