EPA lead plan may slow replacement of dangerous pipes

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday proposed new regulations on lead and copper in drinking water, updating a 30-yearold rule that may have contributed to the lead-tainted water crisis in Flint, Michigan, that began in 2015.

The draft plan, announced by the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Andrew Wheeler, at a news conference in Green Bay, Wisconsin, would include some provisions designed to strengthen oversight of lead in drinking water. But it skips a pricey safety proposal advocated by public health groups and water utilities: the immediate replacement of 6 million lead pipes that connect homes to main water pipes. The proposed new rule would also more than double the amount of time allotted to replace lead pipes in water systems that contain high levels of lead.

Wheeler touted the new regulations as a step forward in protecting water supplies.

“The water sector has known for years and years that the regulations governing lead and copper in our water need to be improved, but administration after administration has failed to get it done,” said Wheeler, noting that the standards were last updated in 1991.

Although the new proposal would extend the timetable for replacing lead pipes, it would also include new requirements that schools and day care centers be tested for lead, and, if elevated lead levels are found, customers would have to be told within 24 hours, not the current standard of 30 days. It would require water utilities to conduct inventories of their lead service pipes and publicly report their locations.

Environmental activists said those moves forward would not make up for the relaxation of standards in other areas.

The slower timetable for the replacement of lead pipes is a “huge weakening change that will swallow up the few small improvements in the proposal,” wrote Erik D. Olson, an expert in drinking water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, in an email.

President Donald Trump has made the rollback of environmental regulations a hallmark of his administration, with initiatives to weaken or erase dozens of EPA regulations on climate change, chemical pollution and water quality. At the same time, he has also called attention to concerns about lead in water.