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The Herald-Palladium
Juliana Knot Read the full article. BENTON HARBOR — Benton Harbor City Commission made progress Monday toward removing lead from the city’s aging infrastructure. City Manager Ellis Mitchell was authorized to award Meeks Contracting Services three contracts – two to replace lead water service lines in Phase I of the EPA replacement project and one to perform a Drinking Water Asset Management inspection, paid for by a state grant. There are 360 lines being considered in this EPA project, Mitchell said. Phase I of the project includes replacing 100 lines, Abonmarche Project Engineer Jason Marquardt told the city commission. Phase I would start in October and end in April or May of 2022. 89.3 WFPL
Ryan Van Velzer Read the full article. Louisville Water Company finished replacing all of the city’s publicly owned lead service lines last year, but they’re still trying to get nearly 1,000 homeowners to take out the last remaining private lines. Service lines connect homes to water mains, and if you live in a home built before 1950, it’s possible that line could be made with lead — a neurotoxin that can leach into drinking water under certain conditions. Water quality compliance manager Chris Bobay says Louisville has about 45,000 homes built before 1950 and about 5 to 10% of them likely have some kind of lead plumbing. Sudbury.com
Tyler Clarke Read the full article. In hopes of reducing lead exposure in Greater Sudbury, city administration has proposed a few options for mayor and council’s consideration. These include a lead water service line replacement and subsidy loan program and a water filter program, which the city’s operations committee will consider during their meeting on Monday. In a report by city water and wastewater professional Cheryl Beam, it’s noted that “many homeowners do not replace their lead water services on the private side once the public side is replaced.” The Washington Post
Brady Dennis & Brittany Greeson Read the full article. “Never again can we allow what happened in Flint, Michigan,” President Biden said on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon this August inside the East Room of the White House. The admonition came as the president touted a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that had just cleared the U.S. Senate. He spoke of rebuilding the nation’s roads and bridges, boosting public transit and constructing electric vehicle charging stations. And replacing pipes. Lots of pipes. The legislation would set aside roughly $55 billion to repair and replace the nation’s aging water and wastewater infrastructure, including funds to eradicate lead pipes that remain buried in communities around the country. “Millions of lead pipes carrying drinking water to our homes and schools and day-care centers — they’re finally going to be replaced,” Biden said. Beacon
Evan Popp Read the full article. As Democrats in Congress craft a federal budget reconciliation package designed to address climate change and expand the social safety net, advocates are also urging that the bill include the funds needed to replace 100% of lead pipes, which have emerged as a significant hazard in places like Lewiston and other areas around the county. The push for such funding in the $3.5 trillion budget bill — which is set to go through the reconciliation process to avoid a Republican filibuster — became more urgent, experts said, after a bipartisan infrastructure bill approved by the U.S. Senate last month included just $15 billion for removal of lead pipes. Advocates have argued that is not nearly enough to replace all lead pipes around the U.S., with estimates of the total cost ranging from $28 billion to as high as $60 billion. “It would be unconscionable for our country to pass a major infrastructure overhaul that leaves three out of four lead pipes intact,” the Sierra Club wrote of the $15 billion proposal. Patch
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. In These Times
Susan Shain Read the full article. MILWAUKEE — Shyquetta McElroy’s son put up a sign in their front yard to celebrate his middle school graduation in June. McElroy says she felt like the “proudest mom on the planet.” But her elation was bittersweet. McElroy thinks back on how emotionally and intellectually grueling it’s been for her son. He is 14 and reads at a second-grade level. He has dyslexia, difficulty retaining information and debilitating migraines and anxiety. These issues, McElroy says, are because of childhood lead poisoning. Wisconsin tested roughly a quarter of its children under age six for lead poisoning in 2018; 6.6 percent had blood lead levels of at least five micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dL), over double the national average of 2.6 percent. The problem is worse among Black children, like McElroy’s son. A 2016 report from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services found that, though Black children made up only 21 percent of children tested for lead poisoning, they accounted for half of all lead poisoning cases. In total, 13.2 percent of Black children tested had elevated lead levels, four times the rate of children with lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., that year. 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.” |
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April 2023
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