EPA proposes stricter rules targeting lead pipes
Plan to make drinking water safer across the nation would cost billions of dollars.
Most U.S. cities would have to replace lead water pipes within 10 years under strict new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, as the Biden administration moves to reduce lead in drinking water and prevent public health crises like those recently seen in Flint, Mich., and Washington, D.C.
Millions of people consume drinking water from lead pipes, and the agency said that tighter standards would improve IQ scores in children and reduce high blood pressure and heart disease in adults.
This would be the biggest overhaul of lead rules in more than three decades and would cost billions of dollars, and would require overcoming enormous practical and financial obstacles.
“These improvements ensure that in a not-toodistant future, there will never be another city and another child poisoned by their pipes,” said Mona HannaAttisha, a pediatrician and clean water advocate.
The Biden administration has said before that it wanted all of the nation’s roughly 9 million lead pipes to be removed, and rapidly. Lead pipes that connect water mains in the street to homes are typically the biggest source of lead in drinking water. They are most common in older, industrial parts of the country.
Lead crises have hit poorer, majority-Black cities like Flint especially hard, highlighting the risks of lead in drinking water.
Their effect reaches beyond public health. After the crises, tap water use dropped nationally, especially among Black and Latino people. The Biden administration says investment is vital to fix this injustice and ensure everyone has safe, lead-free drinking water.
“We’re trying to right a longstanding wrong here,” said Radhika Fox, head of the EPA Office of Water.
The proposal would for the first time require utilities to replace lead pipes even if their lead levels aren’t too high. Most cities have not been forced to replace their lead pipes, and many don’t even know where they are. Some cities with a lot of lead pipes might be given more time, the agency said.
The push to reduce lead in tap water is part of a broader federal effort to combat lead exposure that includes stricter proposed limits on dust from leadbased paint in older homes and child-care facilities and the goal of eliminating lead in aviation fuel.
The EPA enacted the first comprehensive lead-indrinking-water regulations in 1991. Those have significantly helped reduce lead levels, but experts have said that they left loopholes and that lax enforcement allows cities to ignore the problem.
“We now know that having literally tens of millions of people being exposed to low levels of lead from things like their drinking water has a big impact on the population,” and the current lead rules don’t fix it, said Erik Olson, an expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council who challenged the regulations in the early 1990s. “We’re hoping this new rule will have a big impact.”
In addition, the EPA announced it wants to lower the level of lead at which utilities are forced to take action. And federal officials are pushing cities to do a better job of informing the public when elevated lead levels are found.
Another change involves how lead is measured. Utilities would need to collect more samples, which could have a significant effect: When Michigan did something similar, the number of communities in the state flagged for having high lead levels skyrocketed.
The public will have a chance to comment on the new proposal, and the EPA expects to publish a final version of the rule changes next fall. There would be a waiting period before it goes into effect.
Unlike other contaminants, lead seeps into drinking water that’s already left the treatment plant. The main remedy is to add chemicals to keep it from leaching out of pipes and plumbing fixtures, but that is difficult. A home with dangerous lead levels can be next to a house with no lead exposure at all.
It will ultimately be up to utilities to decide whether to pay the full cost of replacing lead pipes, which is too expensive for many people to afford.
“We strongly, strongly encourage water utilities to pay for it,” Fox said.
The Assn. of Metropolitan Water Agencies, which represents large public water utilities, said it can be difficult to secure homeowner permission to do the work and handle rising costs.
The Trump administration also addressed lead in water, issuing new standards just before the end of the president’s term, after years of efforts by advocates. Those rules forced utilities to take stronger action when lead levels rose too high and required them to test daycare centers and schools. They also made communities locate their lead pipes — initial inventories are due in October 2024.
But environmental organizations criticized the rule for not going far enough. In response, the Biden administration said it would make the improvements officials announced Thursday.
The 2021 infrastructure law included $15 billion to find and replace lead pipes. More will be needed. Additional federal funds are available to improve water infrastructure, and the EPA is providing smaller communities with extra help. Some states, however, have been slower to attack the problem — a handful declined the first round of federal funds.
A few communities have replaced pipes quickly. After crises in Benton Harbor, Mich., and Newark, N.J., officials paid for and replaced lead pipes, adopting rules that required homeowners to let construction crews onto their property.
Replacing the country’s lead pipes will be expensive, but the EPA says the health benefits far outweigh the cost.
Those benefits, Fox said, “are really priceless.”