Biden unveils $3 billion for nationwide lead pipe replacement

President Joe Biden announced Thursday $3 billion toward identifying and replacing the nation’s unsafe lead pipes, a long-sought move to improve public health and clean drinking water that will be paid for by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Biden unveiled the new funding in North Carolina, a battleground state Democrats have lost to Donald Trump in the past two presidential elections but are feeling more bullish toward due to an abortion measure on the state’s ballot this November.

…

The Environmental Protection Agency will invest $3 billion in the lead pipe effort annually through 2026, Administrator Michael Regan told reporters. He said that nearly 50% of the funding will go to disadvantaged communities – and a fact sheet from the Biden administration noted that “lead exposure disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income families.”

Omgboom,

Damn Libruls trying to take away our poisonous lead pipes

superfes,

I don’t want to sound negative, but is this like show money, or an actual effective amount?

DahGangalang, (edited )

Like, it feels like this should be the kind of money to put a real dent in the problem…but I worry that the corruption of local governments and the associated contractors will probably soak up a lot of this on tangential things (e.g. lead pipes crosses under this really old road at one point; guess we’ll need to tear up the road for 10 miles in each direction of the cross under point and then repave the whole thing, just to be sure)

Edit: modifying example for clarity.

snooggums,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

You just described using funds to do two things at the same time, which is efficient use of funds.

DahGangalang,

Yeah, but every dollar spent on repaving roads is a dollar that can’t be spent on lead pipes.

I suppose the example I’ve provided is flawed in a sense though. Probably a better example would be that an intersection gets torn up to replace pipes, but the local town council insists on using his brother’s asphalt company. “They might cost twice as much for the repavong, but I promise, it’ll be higher quality” kinda junk.

snooggums,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

Yes, your second example would be corruption because it is being used to intentionally benefit a specific purpose instead of the public.

ricecake,

So, that’s not actually corruption or diversion of funds for this problem, that’s basically what you have to do.
A lot of pipes we know are lead, but even more are unknown because they were installed long enough ago that we’re just operating under the assumption that they’re either lead, old style clay, or wood.

It’s entirely expected that cities will say “there’s a water main under this road from 1901, so we’re ripping it up and replacing the pipe and road”, because that 1901 is entirely sufficient to say that pipe is shit.

You fight lead pipes by replacing all the old pipes, not by trying to selectively only get the lead ones.

DahGangalang,

If that’s really how that works, then I can see why the expense has been kicked down the line so long. I worry this allocated money won’t be enough then and that we’re probably talking “show” money vs “getting things done” money.

ricecake,

It’s complicated how it’s funded, but this isn’t the first or last time we’ve allocated funds for this.

www.epa.gov/dwsrf
epa.gov/…/bipartisan-infrastructure-law-srf-fundi…

Basically, in 1996 we setup a program to make it easier for states to get federal money for water improvements, either via long term loans or grants.
The EPA then doles out the money, and it trickles back over time from loan repayments. That’s why with $21 billion in funding they’ve provided $41 billion in investments.
Periodically Congress adds some more money to the fund, but it’s largely the feds turning the massive one time costs of these projects into reasonable long term investments.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law dumped something like $50 billion into that fund, which is a lot more than it usually has, and $15 billion of which is allocated to lead pipes replacement.
After a round of assessments of pipes and applications from different water providers, the EPA put together a $3 billion package of the most high priority projects that can get started this year.
Then Biden signed the order to issue the round of funding according to EPA recommendations.

This is more like the first big paycheck after getting a new job than winning the lottery.

ZombiFrancis,

I am not sure if you’ve seen the process through which public funding gets funneled through private companies to implement.

The decision to delegate the task to break one job apart for portions of the same job is a thing. My hometown had separate teams building a highway: one westbound one eastbound. They build things in the wrong place.

…kitsapsun.com/…/890000-mistake-discovered-on-hig…

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

I read your article and it pretty clearly says that the problem was with the State DOT Planners and Engineers, not the construction teams.

The problem in this case wasn’t with the people building the road it was with the people who planned it. AKA The Government.

ZombiFrancis,

Well, yes. The planners and engineers are the ones subject to all the political hands of local governments.

Certainly not implicating the construction teams themselves. (Though arguably still if one firm were building both sides they may have noticed sooner.)

Now I admit I say this from both personal experience and a tinge of disgruntlement. But my remarks regard government serving private interests over public ones, not government itself. The system that these planners operate under is one rife with regulatory capture.

Point is: there’s going to be significant administrative bleed at best.

ricecake,

I am aware of the process. I’m not sure what that has to do with “sometimes a big project takes a lot of work, and other things also have to happen to do it”.

ZombiFrancis,

A lot of projects get a lot bigger and become a lot more work without doing much or other things.

Like a local decision to build a new police station, including shooting range requiring land clearing, versus utilizing that funding for the addressing the homeless population. It wasn’t what the money was originally for, but it got moved around legally enough.

Omgboom,

I found 1 article that says $28-60 billion to replace all the lead pipes Nationwide, so not enough to get all of them, but it’s a start

prospect.org/…/2023-02-01-lead-water-pipes/

egonallanon,

60 billion being the upper estimate is kind of wild to as while it’s an unfathomably large amount of money in terms of US government spending it ain’t even all that much. Baffling that this hasn’t been done before and just fixed the problem.

Zoomboingding,
@Zoomboingding@lemmy.world avatar

It’s basically been in process for decades. Pipes in the ground can last 50 years, so replacement of ones put in the ground in the early 80s are due to be replaced now. Each state has a Drinking Water State Revolving Fund program that gets funding from the EPA to replace waterlines. Until recently, the money has been focused on the oldest or most needed projects (some of which are lead), but this recent push has aimed to target specifically all lead lines in the ground.

Zoomboingding,
@Zoomboingding@lemmy.world avatar

AFAIK this is an additional $3B. The BIL has already been funding projects for 2 years, and every state is already in the process of identifying all of their lead service lines. Each waterworks is required to at least have an inventory by October.

And that’s in addition to multiple other infrastructure projects from this administration, including ARPA.

superfes,

Cool, thanks for the answer.

givesomefucks,

This is huge…

I don’t get a chance to be happy with Biden often, but this is one of the rare times.

Lead poisoning doesn’t just hurt people’s health, it makes the stupid and belligerent. Like, those are the actual effects of it.

There’s a reason the benefits of banning leaded gas takes decades, it’s not helping those who already have lead poisoning, it’s just waiting for a new generation to grow up without it.

This is like one of those “best time to plant a tree” things.

The benefits are really far away, but doing it is a huge investment in our future as a society.

It’s reassuring to know society overall will be more sane when I’m old.

TheUncannyObserver,

Sadly, this is barely enough to scratch the surface. We need a lot more money put into this, and it’s not like the presidents before Biden didn’t know about it. They just didn’t even do this much. It’s disgraceful.

UrPartnerInCrime,

Your mood is a disgrace.

TheUncannyObserver,

I’m sorry, sir. I’ll lick the boot harder, I promise!

UrPartnerInCrime,

Biden: Adds on to the amount he’s already given to replace lead pipes; more than any other president has done

The Uncanny Observer: Yeah but it should have been done 20 years ago so I’m mad 😠

Edit: this brings the total up to 9 billion. Still not enough for everything, but how much has every other president gave? Be a little happy

TheUncannyObserver,

You’re right. I need to really celebrate those incremental improvements. I mean, not like we’re gonna get anything more out of democrats. Just whatever they need to still be able to say “we’re not as bad as the other dude”.

maniclucky,

Unironically, yes. Big jumps don’t happen without violent revolution and that rarely works out well. Progress happens by baby steps. If you’re waiting for everything to get better all at once, you will be angry the rest of your life.

beardown, (edited )

Big jumps don’t happen without violent revolution and that rarely works out well.

Explain to me how the United States was created

George Washington did not politely ask for independence.

He and others murdered people for it. A lot of people. And then he won. And now here we all are.

maniclucky,

Rarely

Serinus,

Kind of true, but some lead pipes just aren’t an immediate issue. Like asbestos in a building that isn’t disturbed, it doesn’t hurt anyone until it starts to come loose.

Getting the worst of it solved is a good step.

TheUncannyObserver,

The issue with not dealing with problems immediately, is that people have a tendency to push them down the line over and over until it’s not just immediate, it’s an emergency over a decade ago. Flint still doesn’t have clean water. This should have been a good first step Obama did, like he promised he was going to.

ricecake,

Flint actually does have clean water by most metrics and independent measurements, but public trust is reasonably deeply, deeply shaken.

This, and I don’t mean this as a bad thing, isn’t actually a thing Biden started. It’s a massive disbursal of funds allocated by the infrastructure bill to a program started in 1996 for upgrading water infrastructure and specifically removing lead pipes.

So this is something great to do, and we should keep doing more of it (there’s $12 billion more waiting for future rounds), and we can be slightly happy that we’re not complete fuck ups since we actually started nearly 30 years ago.

We shouldn’t have to live in a world where we need to advertise that the people entrusted to be basically competent at managing our public works are doing their jobs, but here we are, and we should probably advertise this stuff better.

BakerBagel,

It’s in conjunction with state and local funding as well. Your local municipality might be abke to aquire $4 million to replace the main lines through local bonds, while getting $2 million from the state and another $10 million from this federal program.

rottingleaf,

Lead poisoning doesn’t just hurt people’s health, it makes the stupid and belligerent. Like, those are the actual effects of it.

Dosage matters.

givesomefucks,

It takes a very low dosage to see effects, and it stacks.

So, you’re right. But it just feels like you were trying to disagree with me, when you were reinforcing my point that even a little is harmful.

rottingleaf,

But it just feels like you were trying to disagree with me, when you were reinforcing my point that even a little is harmful.

Again this arrogant stupidity.

It takes a very low dosage to see effects, and it stacks.

Define “low” and explain how would you make that something objective for this your sentence to not look awfully stupid.

KairuByte,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

My friend, the recognized “safe” level of lead is literally no lead. Any more than literally 0ppm is above safe lead levels.

Just because it isn’t considered lead poisoning, doesn’t mean it’s safe.

Do some research before you pop off about stuff you don’t understand:

You will find no evidence that lead at any level is safe. In fact, previous research which suggested that lower levels were fine are being refuted by more recent studies, that show quite the opposite.

rottingleaf,

My friend, the recognized “safe” level of lead is literally no lead. Any more than literally 0ppm is above safe lead levels.

That’s not what I’m talking about and this sentence too reaches the “Soviet lecture for kolkhozniks” level of cringe.

By 0 do you mean “under 10^(-10)”, or “under 10^(-13)”, or what?

I know what lead is.

TexMexBazooka,

You’re being pointlessly semantic and making no actual argument here.

rottingleaf,

Didn’t have an opportunity to make it clearer due to opponent’s smartassing tone, so: the argument was that it does matter how much probability there is of lead getting into your water.

Since, as even people under this post explain, it happens differently with different water composition, whether there is vibration, whether some sharp item floats through the pipe etc.

So a lead pipe doesn’t necessarily poison all water passing through it. Just sometimes does that.

Same as a punctured cast iron pipe doesn’t leak always, only when the pressure is right, when some coating of various nature over the puncture gets dissolved or damaged by vibration, etc.

KairuByte,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

A single molecule of lead in a human body is too much. Does that answer your question?

And I’m aware the chances of a specific person consuming lead are slim for most pipes, the problem is there are so many lead pipes throughout the country, that I’d be willing to bet money there are a number of people drinking lead contaminated water right now.

It’s like the lottery, just because the chances are exceedingly small that you will win, doesn’t change the fact that it’s almost guaranteed someone will win.

rottingleaf,

OK.

gravitas_deficiency, (edited )

Ooh, nice. Coming in hot with the ethnic slur against Ukrainians, and then continuing on with some delightfully obnoxious pedantry.

You should stop while you’re behind.

It is a different word, and I misread it; as was pointed out, it’s a Russian cultural anecdote/idiom that non Russians would not necessarily understand. My apologies for starting a kerfluffle with my misunderstanding.

rottingleaf,

You shouldn’t write anything on subjects requiring knowledge of Russian without that knowledge.

Колхозник means, naturally, someone living and working in колхоз .

And “лекция для колхозников” is a reference to a well-known (in ex-USSR) anecdote.

And you are an idiot.

gravitas_deficiency,

So I was going to apologize for my misinterpretation and express some appreciation for giving me some new knowledge, but then that last sentence happened.

rottingleaf,

Sorry for insulting you.

But how else do you call a person who finds an ethnic slur in a word they don’t understand? I’d understand if I’d say anything about Ukrainians at all.

If I do something like that (happens regularly) I admit that I’m an idiot. I’m actually glad to discharge some of the frustration through that.

Well, if you liked the clarification part, the anecdote itself is:

"That’s a skull of Alexander when he was 5, that’s when he was 25, that’s when he was dead. Any questions?

  • How can one person have 3 skulls?
  • And you’re what?
  • A dachnik (that is, a person with a garden and now usually, then maybe a house without utilities in the countryside, living in the city).
  • Then go to hell, the lecture is for kolkhozniks."

The anecdote refers to the expected intelligence level of typical Soviet brochures, like of an enthusiast worker who offered to reduce the acceptable percentage of discarded product to “none” instead of some percent and similar.

And, well, maybe to how Soviet officials viewed their population.

gravitas_deficiency,

For what it’s worth, I do actually appreciate the anthropological background. And yes, I was being rather foolish in my initial comment.

Frog-Brawler,
@Frog-Brawler@kbin.social avatar

Holy shit, we still have lead pipes in places!? I thought those were replaced in the 80's.

nobleshift,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    TheUncannyObserver,

    Wasn’t lead also linked to paranoia, and the likelihood to believe conspiracy theories?

    WhatAmLemmy,

    It’s proven to damage the brain, cause mental illness, and increase aggession and overall criminal behavior, so… Yes!

    TheUncannyObserver,

    So maybe in the coming decades, Florida won’t be the laughingstock of the nation anymore. Bad news for Alabama.

    Jax,

    Bad news for any place that has to take in Floridian refugees

    TheUncannyObserver,

    I would say they could just count on evolving gills for when climate change sinks their state, but they don’t believe in that either.

    Hazzia,

    Idk man knowing Ronnie he’s probably going to say something like “well us REAL AMERICANS grew up with lead pipes and we all turned out FINE!” turning it into a partisan issue like the stupid gas stoves and just reject all funding

    givesomefucks,

    It’s worse than you think.

    You know those old ill maintained public schools?

    The combination of not just old lead pipes, but being shut down for extended periods mean lots of children are getting lead poisoning at school.

    gao.gov/…/protecting-children-lead-exposure-schoo…

    So even if your house and local water is fine, your kids might be getting dosed up with lead at a young age, which is when it’s most impactful.

    Lead is a serious problem that lots of people assume was fixed when we took it out of gas. It helped, but there’s still lots of lead around.

    It’s going to be one of those things future generations look back on and go “no wonder they were so fucking crazy”.

    ricecake,

    Nope, they’re actually still pretty common across the industrialized world. It’s not just a US thing.

    We recognized the potential for harm decades ago, but for the most part it’s not a critical issue due to some minutiae of how lead pipes work in practice.

    Incidents like Flint made it clear that the consequences of messing up that minutiae are big enough that we really, really shouldn’t be relying on them.

    So this isn’t billions of dollars in emergency response, it’s billions of dollars in preventative maintenance, which is even better. 😊

    bluGill,

    We stopped using lead in the 80s - the existing pipes are mostly still there and working just fine. If you are in a building or city built before 1985 assume there is lead in the plumbing someplace and take action. The more important thing you can do is let drinking water run for a minute before drinking (or install a RO drinking water system that will remove lead - regular filters will not - RO is most common of that that will).

    With a little care (much of it chemistry - meaning your water department - not much lead will leach from your pipes and you are okay. Okay should not be confused with good, 0 lead is what you want. However it isn't feasible to replace all pipes in a day and so step one is doing as little damage as possible, then we reduce even that.

    givesomefucks,

    install a RO drinking water

    People will get one for their whole house, which is great unless your home has leaded pipes…

    It sounds like something people would think of, but they often don’t.

    If your house has leaded pipes, you can get a small RO either by your sink, or before the hose that connects to your fridge is a better plan. It doesn’t have to be by your fridge, it can be where the hose meets pipe which is usually out of the way.

    The real solution is replacing the piping, but that shits gets expensive.

    A small RO to your fridge is doable even when renting, and if you get tests done and it’s high, some landlords would pay it just to show they’re not liable and did something to address the issue if it’s high.

    bluGill,

    A whole house ro filter is evpensive, so I doubt most will install one vs a drinking water system. Most plumbers won't know about a whole house system much less sell one.

    unless you live in an area where the water is so bad your showers dosen't get you clean. Then you can get one - but you should have one.

    givesomefucks,

    Because of urban sprawl lots of homes in cities have wells still.

    House built in the 40s before city water had expanded can still be on a well, and septic tanks.

    Like lead pipes it’s something that just never got updated.

    Although because of the risk of old septic tanks collapsing, some cities have programs where if you hook up the to city services for switching and filling in the septic can get spread over like 20-30 years as an add on to your water bill.

    bluGill,

    there is normally nothing wrong with well water. I have lab reports on my current well to prove it.

    breadsmasher,
    @breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

    “Buh muh lead!1 gubment ruinin muh watuh!”

    Tire,

    Waiting for the conspiracy videos where people are claiming they’are adding 4G modules to your pipes.

    breadsmasher,
    @breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

    Weve replaced all your lead pipes with covid vaccines

    runswithjedi,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Zipitydew,

    Run fiber with the new pipes too.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • politics@lemmy.world
  • fightinggames
  • All magazines
    •