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.
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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.”
I don’t want to sound negative, but is this like show money, or an actual effective amount?
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
https://prospect.org/environment/2023-02-01-lead-water-pipes/
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.
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.
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.
Cool, thanks for the answer.
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.
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.
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.
It’s complicated how it’s funded, but this isn’t the first or last time we’ve allocated funds for this.
https://www.epa.gov/dwsrf
https://www.epa.gov/water-infrastructure/bipartisan-infrastructure-law-srf-funding-status
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.
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.
https://archive.kitsapsun.com/news/local/890000-mistake-discovered-on-highway-16-project-ep-419650199-357597121.html
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”.
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.
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.
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.
You just described using funds to do two things at the same time, which is efficient use of funds.
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.
Yes, your second example would be corruption because it is being used to intentionally benefit a specific purpose instead of the public.