Getting the lead out of my front yard

Milton Courier
Casey Langan

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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.