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Eric Kiefer Read the full article. BELLEVILLE, NJ — Belleville officials released a drinking water advisory on Wednesday, after the town failed to meet a minimum threshold for lead service line replacement. According to the municipal notice: "The Belleville Water Department has not yet replaced the minimum required – 7 percent – of lead service lines within one year of a lead action level exceedance, thereby violating a drinking water requirement. Even though this is not an emergency, as our customers, you have a right to know what happened, what you should do, and what we are doing to correct the situation." Milton Courier
Casey Langan Read the full article. This wasn’t your normal home improvement project, but this summer, we replaced the pipe that delivers drinking water from under our street to our faucet. My family’s pipe was one of an estimated six million to 10 million lead service lines dispersed across 11,000 communities in the United States at risk of delivering lead-contaminated water. It’s not often that a pressing national issue like this literally comes to your front yard. President Biden has made repeated promises to help replace all lead pipes in this country. My colleagues at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center spend a lot of time thinking about the safety, equity and funding challenges surrounding toxic lead pipes. Yet, until last winter, I hadn’t given it much more than a passing thought. ABC57
Roxie Elliott Read the full article. BENTON HARBOR, Mich. — Benton Harbor is getting long awaited funds to replace all lead pipes in the city after years of battling high drinking water levels. The city had already received $17 million in funding from various organizations like the EPA and Clean Water State Revolving Fund. This new $20 million funding comes from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes & Energy (EGLE). “No amount of lead is safe and that’s why we’ve got to get lead service lines out of the system,” said Liesl Clark, Director of Michigan EGLE. “How can we get filters to people as fast as possible, make improvements to the distribution system, support the work happening at the water system.” Wisconsin Watch
Madeline Fuerstenberg Read the full article. In 2016, then-President Barack Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint, Michigan after a botched drinking water switch tainted the city’s water supply and spiked lead poisoning rates among children. The city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, received its first state grant to replace an estimated 1,266 residential lead service lines only a year later. The city has replaced about 400 lead service lines with those made of copper or plastic, and more are soon slated for swapping. “We want every lead service line out of our system,” Lane Berg, the city’s utilities manager, said while giving a reporter an up-close look at a replacement job. “So, we’ve set a goal: By the end of 2023, we want to have all the lead out.” ‘It’s criminal’: Milwaukeeans call for speedier lead pipeline removal to cut childhood poisoning9/9/2021
Wisconsin Watch
Diana Butsko Read the full article. Sitting in his North Side Milwaukee rental house, Nazir Al-Mujaahid spoke matter-of-factly about the challenges his son Shu’aib faces, while the quiet 9-year-old lingered in another room. Shu’aib excels at sports, Al-Mujaahid said, but his speaking skills developed late, and he still lags behind his 6-year-old brother in reading. Al-Mujaahid, 45, believes that lead poisoning is hindering his son’s development. Confirming precisely where the lead came from is impossible, but Al-Mujaahid suspects the aging lead pipelines that carried drinking water into his home. The city for years failed to warn the family of potential lead hazards in their home — or that Shu’aib registered elevated lead levels as a toddler in 2014, Al-Mujaahid said. Three years later, the family stopped drinking from their tap after learning about risks from lead pipes. WLNS6
Samana Sheikh Read the full article. LANSING, Mich. (WLNS)–Governor Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy proposed $200 million to remove lead service lines statewide. They called on the federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan to improve access to safe drinking water. “Every Michigander deserves access to safe drinking water and every community deserves lead-free pipes,” said Governor Whitmer. “We must make long-overdue upgrades to our water infrastructure and build on the progress we have made under the MI Clean Water Plan to replace lead pipes, fix sewer systems, and tackle PFAS in our water supply. I will work to get people the help they need right now and make lasting, structural investments in infrastructure to protect public health. I urge leaders in Washington to come together to pass the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act so we can replace lead service lines nationwide, and ensure every parent can give their kid a glass of water at the dinner table with confidence that it’s safe.” Chicago Tribune
Michael Hawthorne Read the full article. Three toxic water pipes gone. Another 399,997 to go. After denying for years that Chicago has a widespread problem with brain-damaging lead in tap water, city officials are embarking on a long-delayed campaign to eliminate hidden hazards at virtually every home and two-flat built before the mid-1980s. The Department of Water Management is moving at a snail’s pace so far, though. Workers this week dug up the front yard at just the third house approved for a safer copper water line, which replaced one of the thousands of lead pipes connected to the city’s network of underground street mains. Gray DC
Grace Ferguson Read the full article. WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - President Biden has pledged to replace every lead pipe in the country, but some experts warn the funding allocated in the bipartisan infrastructure bill isn’t enough to get the job done. Biden’s American Jobs Plan initially allocated $45 billion to get lead pipes out of the country’s water systems, but the bipartisan infrastructure bill only offers a third of that—$15 billion. A leading industry group, the American Water Works Association, estimates the project could cost $60 billion or more. 12WBOY
Sam Kirk Read the full article. CLARKSBURG, W.Va. – The Clarksburg Water Board (CWB) continues to address the possible lead pipes and said it is working to identify and remove old lead service lines. As of Thursday, September 2nd, 868 homes have been tested; 47 of those homes, or 5.4%, tested higher than the EPA established action level. The Clarksburg Water Board announced that it will be launching a new interactive map next week on the CWB’s website that will allow residents to select their location and view inventory data that has been collected for their address. The Christian Science Monitor
Stephanie Hanes Read the full article. Yvette Jordan remembers the day she learned the water fountains at her school were dangerous. It was in March 2016, and Ms. Jordan was teaching history at Barringer High School in Newark, New Jersey. At a gathering in the school’s gymnasium, she recalls, city officials told the crowd that high levels of lead had been discovered in the school’s drinking water, which public health officials say is harmful to both children and adults. The officials insisted that Newark did not have a Flint, Michigan, situation – a reference to the lead-laced drinking water crisis that had made national headlines earlier that year. They would just need to shut down the water fountains. But additional tests revealed high lead levels elsewhere in the city’s water system, and community members began to mobilize. |
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