President Joe Biden announced Thursday $3 billion toward identifying and replacing theĀ nationās unsafeĀ leadĀ pipes,Ā a long-sought move to improve public health and clean drinking waterĀ that will be paidĀ for by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Biden unveiled the new fundingĀ in North Carolina, a battleground state Democrats have lost to Donald Trump in the past two presidential electionsĀ but are feeling more bullish toward due to an abortion measure on the stateās ballot this November.
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The Environmental Protection Agency will invest $3 billion in theĀ leadĀ pipe effort annually through 2026, Administrator Michael Regan told reporters. He said that nearly 50% of the funding will go to disadvantaged communities ā and a fact sheet from the Biden administration noted that ālead exposure disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income families.ā
Nope, theyāre actually still pretty common across the industrialized world. Itās not just a US thing.
We recognized the potential for harm decades ago, but for the most part itās 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 shouldnāt be relying on them.
So this isnāt billions of dollars in emergency response, itās billions of dollars in preventative maintenance, which is even better. š