Drinking lead can damage people's brains, but Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach opposes a plan to remove lead water pipes.

Drinking lead can damage people’s brains, but Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach opposes a plan to remove lead water pipes.

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In their letter, the attorneys general wrote, “[The plan] sets an almost impossible timeline, will cost billions and will infringe on the rights of the States and their residents – all for benefits that may be entirely speculative.”

Kobach repeated this nearly verbatim in a March 7 post on X (formerly Twitter).

Buttigieg responded by writing, “The benefit of not being lead poisoned is not speculative. It is enormous. And because lead poisoning leads to irreversible cognitive harm, massive economic loss, and even higher crime rates, this work represents one of the best returns on public investment ever observed.”

  • drphungkyEnglish
    2•3 months ago

    Did no one read the article? All of his complaints are correct! Replacing old city pipes, that are almost assuredly covered in years of internal layers to mitigate lead leaking, will have a negligible to possibly even negative effect on lead at the tap. Even Brookings said so in their study! Buttigieg is getting a total pass here ignoring the real issues raised by just rebutting about how lead is bad, when they’re both saying that. So tired of people scoring cheap political points on soundbites, and Buttigieg doesn’t usually fall prey to that sort of thing.

    Yes, the funding should have been higher, but if we’ve only got 15 million to work with, it might actually make more sense to do targeted fixes in low income communities in old residential buildings, where you’re most likely to have lead effects actually being felt at the tap from (relatively) newer lead pipe still in walls. But that would be expensive and much harder than just replacing water mains, so they’re doing the easy less-important work first, rather than getting the biggest bang for their buck.

    • @shalafiEnglish
      5•3 months ago

      Kobach later responded to Buttigieg, writing, “What’s speculative is that the admin’s EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] rule will have ANY EFFECT AT ALL on lead in tap water. It doesn’t touch the pipes in buildings where most lead pipes are. You’d know that had you bothered to click the link [to Kobach’s February 9 statement against the plan].”

      Yeah, he’s not questioning the toxicity of lead, he’s questioning whether this effort would make a difference in lead content.

      I’m out. Y’all continue the circle jerk.