Six years after the crisis in Flint, Michigan, the Environmental Protection Agency is adopting an overhaul of a decades-old regulation targeting lead in drinking water.
“This historic action strengthens every aspect of the lead and copper rule and will help accelerate reductions in lead in drinking water to better protect our children and communities,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Tuesday, unveiling the final updates to the 1991 lead and copper rule. That rule sets limits on lead levels in drinking water and outlines actions water utilities must take if systems exceed that level.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley, a Democrat, joined Wheeler in the announcement, as well as other local officials from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“We do understand that this announcement is about progress, not perfection,” Neeley said. “We do know that we have to understand that there’s more work to be done, and we are stepping up to the challenge to do that work that’s necessary to protect our greatest asset,” which he said is children.
Environmentalists have criticized the updates, which they say aren’t strict enough and would increase the time water utilities are allowed to replace all of their lead service lines to more than 30 years.
Wheeler said the Trump administration’s approach will drive more replacements of lead pipes, even though the changes lower the required share of pipes water utilities must replace each year from 7% to 3%.
“While the old rule theoretically included a 7% replacement rate, it was riddled with loopholes and off-ramps,” Wheeler said. He added that more than 14,000 water systems have been found to have high levels of lead since 1997, but only 1% have replaced their lead service lines.
The Trump administration’s changes close loopholes in the old regulation that allowed water utilities to replace only parts of pipes or bypass replacing lines if they made changes to monitoring and other treatment options, he said.
The final changes are largely similar to what the EPA proposed last year, including setting a new “trigger level” of 10 parts per billion, meaning water systems would have to start taking action sooner to treat sources of lead. The prior regulation had set an action level at 15 parts per billion.
Lead is a heavy metal that had been used for decades in pipes and paint. The substance is known to cause learning disabilities, slower growth, and other health problems, particularly in children. If water isn’t treated properly and lead service pipes corrode, the metal can get into drinking water supplies.
Residents of Flint, for example, were exposed to high levels of lead contamination after state officials switched the city’s water supply in 2014 without properly treating it.
The EPA’s new rule will also require water utilities to notify their customers within 24 hours if they detect lead levels that exceed the action level. In addition, it includes a new requirement for water systems to test for lead in the water of schools and childcare facilities, Wheeler said.
However, environmentalists and former EPA officials say the Trump administration’s rule doesn’t go nearly far enough, especially because science has found there is no safe level of exposure to lead contamination.
They say the rule is too lenient on water utilities by allowing them more time to replace lead service lines.
“Trump’s EPA has finalized a rule that complicates and impedes enforcement and does nothing to accelerate the replacement of lead service lines,” said Betsy Southerland, former director of science and technology in the EPA’s water office until 2017.
“What a heartbreaking failure for all those communities that will have to wait another 30 years for lead to be removed from their drinking water, especially environmental justice communities that will again be most adversely impacted,” Southerland added.
Wheeler said the EPA had to balance requirements to replace lead service lines with the limited resources available to water systems that also have to manage other pollution challenges.
“If I could wave a magic wand and replace every single lead service line over the next 12 months, that’d be great, but we have to live in reality in this world,” he said.
Even so, according to Wheeler, the new rule will see lead pipes replaced three times as quickly as the prior regulatory regime. He told reporters the replacements could be even greater than that, too, given a requirement that water systems must replace the service lines leading up to a house if a homeowner pays to have their lines replaced.
Environmental groups, however, suggest that the latter requirement could disadvantage minority and low-income people who don’t have the money to replace their lines. The Environmental Defense Fund, in comments on the EPA’s proposed changes, noted an American University-led study that found a Washington, D.C., program giving homeowners more opportunities to pay to replace their lines lead to more replacements in wealthier areas.
“Everyone, regardless of their income or race, deserves to drink water that isn’t coming from a lead pipe,” said Tom Neltner, the Environmental Defense Fund’s chemicals policy director. He added that the EPA’s new rule “is a major missed opportunity to advance efforts to equitably replace the country’s remaining lead service lines.”
