About four decades ago, when the Environmental Protection Agency was first trying to figure out what to do about lead in drinking water, Ronnie Levin quantified its damage: Roughly 40 million people drank water with dangerous levels of lead, degrading the intelligence of thousands of kids.
But new regulations were going to be costly and complicated. So, “instead of trying to deal with it substantively, they just tabled it,” Levin, a former EPA researcher, said of some of her colleagues at the agency in the 1980s.
One co-worker, though, leaked Levin’s analysis to the press, igniting a public outcry that pressured the EPA to act. And the rules it issued back then have stayed in place, with only modest changes, ever since.
It feels like we’re finally waking up from insane free market dogmatism. I’m liking the active regulatory posture of the Biden administration.
I like it too but we need to keep this up for a good 40 years to undo the damage since Reagan, and all it takes is one Republican president to undo it all.
Or any governor appealing to a regressive Supreme Court.
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I wonder how they’ll phrase it when the inevitable conservative backlash walks this change back
The agency did not force utilities to eliminate lead in drinking water, but instead required them to test for lead in homes and add anti-corrosive chemicals.
This is us here in Boston: MWRA softens the water to prevent lead from leaching, and monitors. There at least was a big program to replace water mains and targeted pipes, but I stopped paying attention years ago
From my understanding, since I have an older house and it looks like my water pipe is copper, lead paint is a bigger worry, including contamination of soil from leaded exterior paint. My kids were tested frequently and we were strongly advised against vegetable gardens within ten feet of the house - that seemed to work
It’ll be interesting to see how this will change things here
Friendly reminder that Flint, Michigan still doesn’t have safe drinking water. After 9 years.
