The Environmental Protection Agency will require all water utilities to replace most of the lead drinking-water pipes in the country within the next 10 years, according to a new rule announced today by the federal regulator.
The new rule will “significantly reduce the risk of exposure to lead through drinking water,” according to the EPA.
“There is no known safe level of lead in drinking water. Exposure to drinking water contaminated with lead can cause serious human health impacts including neurodevelopmental problems in children and heart disease in adults,” the EPA said in a summary of the rule. “Young children and pregnant people are especially susceptible to the impacts of lead exposure. Reducing lead in drinking water will reduce the risk of negative neurodevelopmental outcomes for children as well as reduce a range of health risks to adults.”
The EPA estimates that up to nine million homes in the country are served through lead pipes, which were commonly used for water piping and plumbing until they were banned nationally in 1986. The EPA announced that they would make $2.6 billion for water infrastructure projects and $35 million in competitive grant funding for specifically reducing lead in drinking water.
“We’ve known for decades that lead exposure has serious long-term impacts for children’s health. And yet, millions of lead service lines are still delivering drinking water to homes,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “President Biden is putting an end to this generational public health problem. With the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements and historic investments in lead pipe replacement, the Biden-Harris Administration is fulfilling its commitment that no community, regardless of race, geography, or wealth, should have to worry about lead-contaminated water in their homes.”
The EPA announced a rule in 2021 that required water service providers to complete an inventory of service lines to provide information to the EPA, by Oct. 16, 2024. The service providers are also required by the EPA to send notices to customers if they have a known or potential service line containing lead.
The Riverhead Water District is on its way to completing that initial inventory and has been obtaining data from private property owners about their service lines, Superintendent Frank Mancini said.
The district has roughly 12,500 service lines around town and has roughly 4,000 lines — 3,600 private service lines and 400 public lines — left to inventory, Mancini said. Almost all of them are non-lead lines, he said, sans a few dozen homes, which the district has used grant money to replace.
Mancini said he’s “comfortable about where the Riverhead Water District is” at this point with it’s service lines. He said his predecessors did a good job of removing and replacing old lead lines.
The town received a state grant of $627,327 in 2021 to replace lead service lines; the town was offered the money in 2019 because it had a combination of high blood lead levels, low median household income and a large number of old houses placed higher on the regional list, according to the State Department of Health.
Mancini said the water district has been less successful in obtaining information about the type of water service lines in older homes in the downtown area, where there is a high number of Spanish-speaking residents. Mancini said the residents “reacted poorly” when town representatives went door-to-door; he hopes to reach them by creating a system for people to send a picture of their water meter to a link within a QR code. He said residents who have yet to be contacted by the water district about the possibility of lead service lines can send a picture of their water meter to mancini@townofriverheadny.gov.
Mancini said the town has grant money remaining to continue to replace lead lines as they are discovered, and will look to obtain grants when that money runs out.
“I think the data we’ve collected in our first inventory, we’re going to use that to apply for additional grants… and hopefully solve this once and for all,” he said.
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