Perkins, the president of his neighborhood association, learned from a group chat what was happening: The utility had sent letters saying it would soon be replacing some lead pipes in the neighborhood, though Perkins said he never received one. He didn’t even realize there were lead pipes there.
“No one tells you what they are doing,” Perkins said. “They just do it.”
Even after utility workers pulled pipes from underneath the street in front of Perkins’s residence, leaving a hole in the sidewalk, the lead pipes under his home remain.
A decade after a crisis in Flint triggered national alarm about the dangers of lead in U.S. drinking water, the White House estimates that more than 9 million lead pipelines still supply homes across the country. In his first year in office, President Biden secured $15 billion through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to address the problem. Still, residents across the country are grappling with a patchwork system of replacing those lines — which begins in some places as a partial replacement of lead pipes — sowing confusion and uncertainty about the safety of their everyday tap water.
The cost of drinking contaminated water can last for decades. There is no safe level of exposure to lead, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can cause developmental delays, difficulty learning and behavioral problems. Even low-level exposure can cause permanent cognitive damage, especially in developing children, and it disproportionately harms Black and low-income families. Recent research found school-age children affected by the crisis in Flint endured significant and lasting academic setbacks.
In 2014, Flint officials switched the city’s water source to save money but did not ensure there were corrosion-control chemicals in the new water supply. Residents in the majority-Black city, where a third of the population lives in poverty, quickly began complaining of contaminated water coming from their taps. But complaints were ignored for more than a year. Nearly 100,000 Flint residents were exposed to lead through their home water sources, according to the CDC.
Following a monumental citizen suit against the city of Flint and Michigan state officials, they agreed to pay for the removal of all the city’s lead service line pipes. Though the city originally agreed to replace all of the pipes by early 2020, some residents are still waiting.
The Environmental Protection Agency has projected that replacing the nearly 10 million lead pipes that supply U.S. homes with drinking water could cost at least $45 billion. The EPA has separately proposed requiring water utilities nationwide to replace all those lead pipes within 10 years.
“Communities around the country are already engaged in efforts to replace their lead service line, and some are ahead of others, for sure,” said Bruno Pigott, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator for water.
Since 2022, Tennessee has been allotted nearly $139 million from the infrastructure law to get rid of lead pipes. But, once the money is distributed, it’s up to the state to decide how to spend and distribute funds to cities.
In order to be eligible for the funding, Memphis’s utility must fulfill certain requirements, said LaTricea Adams, from the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, like completing a comprehensive inventory of lead pipe locations. The city is still waiting for approval. Memphis Light, Gas and Water has conducted 5,843 partial replacements since 2012, according to documents provided to the city council this week, out of 24,000 lead pipes officials have said are in the city.
Doug McGowen, the utility’s president, said in a Memphis City Council committee meeting on Tuesday that replacing all the city’s pipes could cost up to $100 million.
The varying drinking water systems across the country reflect differences in state attitudes and cultures, but in a “perfect world, everyone would have the same system,” said Ronnie Levin, an environmental health instructor at Harvard University. To Levin, the piecemeal approach to lead replacement programs reflects lack of rigor on the part of federal officials.
“The EPA could have a more rigorous approach than it does, but water utilities tend to be feisty,” said Levin, who worked as a scientist at the EPA for more than 30 years. She equated the nation’s disparate public water systems to “trying to corral 60,000 teenagers with attitudes.”
Lead pipes were initially…
Read More: Why U.S. still struggles to replace lead pipes 10 years after Flint