Biden EPA proposes requirements for utilities to remove toxic lead water pipes within a decade; Chicago likely to get more time

CHICAGO — President Joe Biden’s administration is moving to require utilities to replace every toxic lead pipe connecting homes to water mains during the next decade, though Chicago and several other cities likely will get more time to finish the job.

Ingesting tiny concentrations of lead can permanently damage the developing brains of children and contribute to heart disease, kidney failure and other health problems later in life. One study estimated more than 400,000 deaths a year in the U.S. are linked to lead exposure.

For decades dust from lead-based paint has been considered the chief source of exposure to the toxic metal. But in recent years the largely hidden threat of lead water pipes has become more widely understood, driven in part by federal research in Chicago and a crisis in Flint, Michigan, that showed how the simple act of drinking a glass of unfiltered tap water can pose significant health risks.

Biden promised during his 2020 campaign to speed up the replacement of lead pipes known as service lines. One of the big infrastructure bills his administration brokered with Congress earmarked $15 billion toward that effort. New regulatory changes announced Wednesday would help determine how and where the money is spent.

“Everyone in this country should be able to turn on their tap for a glass of water and know that it’s safe to drink,” Michael Regan, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said Wednesday during a call with journalists.

More than 9 million homes nationwide get their drinking water from a service line made of lead. Chicago has 400,000 of the toxic pipes, more than any other city. Illinois has more than any other state.

Clout-heavy unions ensured Chicago’s plumbing code required use of the toxic metal until Congress banned the practice in 1986.

As recently as 2018, city officials denied the nation’s third largest city has a widespread problem with brain-damaging lead in drinking water, even though testing kits distributed by the city revealed high levels of the toxic metal in every neighborhood.

Action by state lawmakers and the promise of federal assistance helped change attitudes at City Hall. In early November, Mayor Brandon Johnson and other elected officials announced Chicago had secured a $336 million federal loan to replace 30,000 lead service lines during the next three years.

Physicians and scientists say that unless water drawn from household faucets is properly filtered, the only way to keep the lead out in older cities such as Chicago is by replacing service lines connecting homes and small apartment buildings to local water supplies.

“We can’t see lead in water, we can’t taste it, we can’t smell it, but it has silently and innocuously diminished the promise of generations of our children,” said Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician associated with Hurley Children’s Hospital and Michigan State University, who helped expose the extent of the Flint water crisis.

Regulatory changes proposed by the Biden administration would overhaul the 1991 Lead and Copper Rule, a package of requirements deemed largely ineffective by multiple federal scientific advisory panels.

Under the 1991 rule, utilities are considered to be in compliance as long as 90% of the homes tested have lead levels below 15 parts per billion, a standard that isn’t based on scientific evidence of dangers posed by the toxic metal. Many utilities, including Chicago’s, can meet the standard by adding corrosion-fighting chemicals to the water supply that form a protective coating inside lead pipes.

The proposed changes would require every utility to replace 10% of its lead service lines annually on average, regardless of how much of the toxic metal is detected during sampling. Utilities would be forced to provide water filters to customers if three rounds of testing found 10 ppb or more of lead in 90% of the samples.

Testing methods also would be updated. In addition to sampling the first liter drawn at the beginning of a day, the EPA would require utilities to sample the fifth liter drawn — a change that would more accurately detect lead levels in water stagnating overnight in a service line.

Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Biden EPA’s proposal is a significant improvement from a version floated in 2020 by President Donald Trump’s administration, which would have effectively delayed lead pipe replacements for up to three decades and, in some cases, allowed cities to keep toxic pipes in the ground indefinitely.

Yet Olson said there are still reasons to be concerned.

“In a moment when many of us feel overwhelmed by bad news, the EPA’s lead rule provides a ray of hope that we are approaching the day when every family can trust that the water from their kitchen tap is safe, regardless of how much money they have or their ZIP code,” Olson said in a statement. “But without mandatory requirements for water systems to pay the full cost of removing all lead pipes, history shows us that many water utilities will not take the actions needed to reduce lead levels for every household.”

Trade groups for water utilities said they are withholding comment until they can review the proposed changes. Once the regulations are published in the Federal Register, the EPA will accept public comments for at least 60 days.

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