Water Commissioner Defends Slow Start in Effort to Remove Lead Service Lines as ‘Quite Impressive’10/1/2021
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Heather Cherone Read the full article. The commissioner of the Chicago Department of Water Management told members of the Chicago City Council on Friday that it was “quite impressive” that city crews had replaced 10 of the approximately 400,000 lead service lines responsible for contaminating Chicagoans’ tap water in 13 months. Andrea Cheng, appearing before the City Council’s Budget and Government Operations Committee to detail the department’s proposed budget of $331.2 million in 2022, acknowledged that “doesn’t sound like much, but when you think about the fact that we’ve never done it before, it’s actually quite impressive.” Uprise RI
Steve Ahlquist Read the full article. Over forty organizations, dozens of elected officials and hundreds of individuals have signed on the the Rhode Island Childhood Lead Action Project‘s campaign to convince state leaders to invest $500m of the state’s ARPA funds (and other sources of federal dollars) to provide “full, free lead service line replacement for all Rhode Islanders.” This amounts to replacing the lead lines in around 100,000 buildings statewide. WSAU
Mike Leischner Read the full article. SCHOFIELD, WI (WSAU) — The City of Schofield is applying for another round of Safe Drinking Water Loan Program funding to replace lead service lines in the city. Mayor Kregg Hoehn says it’s part of an ongoing effort to get rid of the lead from the city’s water system, which can have negative health effects, especially in younger children. “We’re trying to make money available to people in hopes that they’ll do it,” said Hoehn. “There’s advantages to being lead-free.” The Pew Charitable Trust
Alex Brown Read the full article. Since 2018, tests have found that scores of homes in Benton Harbor, Michigan, have dangerously high lead levels in their drinking water. With nearly 6,000 known lead service pipes in the city, local officials were left staring at a $30 million problem—a cost many times greater than their annual budget. The city found some help with a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and another $3 million grant from the state. But leaders really began to feel hopeful earlier this month when Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced a $200 million proposal for lead pipe replacement throughout the state, including $20 million for Benton Harbor, using federal American Rescue Plan Act money. WE ACT Part Of Coalition To Help Communities Quantify And Locate Dangerous Lead Service Lines9/28/2021
Harlem World Magazine
Read the full article. Google.org announced $3 million in grants to BlueConduit Charitable Fund, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and WE ACT for Environmental Justice to support the equitable replacement of lead service lines. The grants will fund the development of BlueConduit’s open source machine learning technologies, which will enable cities and towns of all sizes to quantify and map their lead service line inventory and help municipalities estimate the cost of replacing this health-threatening component of our water infrastructure. The tool will also allow water utilities to create public-facing maps that aim to strengthen public communication and help meet upcoming US EPA Revised Lead and Copper Rule requirements. Initial software will be made available in the first half of 2022. BlueConduit, WE ACT, and NRDC will work closely with community groups and municipal utilities to ensure that the tools are designed to meet their needs. Activists say Wilkinsburg-Penn Joint Water Authority should address concerns about lead, water costs9/28/2021
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Kate Giammarise Read the full article. A group of advocates are calling on a local water authority to create a program to assist low-income customers who need help paying their bills, and to fully replace lead service lines in the communities it serves that suffer from higher rates of lead poisoning. They say the Wilkinsburg-Penn Joint Water Authority, which serves about 40,000 customers in Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs, should also create a community advisory committee related to lead issues, and end partial lead line replacements, which can exacerbate lead problems. Riverhead inks grant contract with state for $627,327 to replace old water lines containing lead9/28/2021
Riverhead Local
Denise Civiletti Read the full article. Riverhead has inked a grant agreement with the State of New York for more than $627,000 in funding to replace water service lines in downtown Riverhead that contain lead. The $627,327 grant award, one of 18 made to municipalities statewide as part of the State Department of Health’s Lead Service Line Replacement Program, was announced by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in July 2019. Riverhead met the state’s eligibility criteria for the program — percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels; median household income; and number of homes built before 1939 when lead service lines were used. WSBT 22
Read the full article. Michigan's new budget deal would include $10 million toward getting rid of lead pipes in Benton Harbor. This comes as the city approves new private contracts to remove hundreds of lead pipes around the community. Those contracts will be funded using federal money from the EPA. Over 300 lead pipes are expected to be replaced over the next 4 years. WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Dave Lucas Read the full article. The Albany Water Department has launched a new program to aid homeowners in lead service replacements, part of an effort to eliminate lead service pipes in the city by 2040. Officials say about 40 percent of homes in the city are hooked up to lead service lines. Water Commissioner Joe Coffey says Albany's Lead Service Replacement Program provides assistance to anyone – homeowners, landlords, and renters. “This is the initial run at the program. So we're starting from like ground zero. And we wanted to get something out there to start with. So right now, if there's a leak on a water service and it's lead, the service has to be replaced, in its entirety. Before we had the city code changed, so if there's any kind of water service, the whole service needs to be replaced. Before you'd only replace half of it either from the house to the shut off, or the shut off to the main. The water department's always done from the main to the shut off, even though the homeowner owns it. Historically. We've done that.” The Bradford Era
Marcie Schellhammer Read the full article. The Bradford City Water Authority is concentrating efforts to attempt to reduce the number of delinquent water accounts in the system. At Wednesday’s meeting, Executive Director Steve Disney explained the authority is “utilizing tools and features inside the Edmunds Billing Software/System” which is shared with the City of Bradford and the Bradford Sanitary Authority to apply payments in a “waterfall manner.” |
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