President Joe Biden announced Thursday $3 billion toward identifying and replacing theĀ nationās unsafeĀ leadĀ pipes,Ā a long-sought move to improve public health and clean drinking waterĀ that will be paidĀ for by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Biden unveiled the new fundingĀ in North Carolina, a battleground state Democrats have lost to Donald Trump in the past two presidential electionsĀ but are feeling more bullish toward due to an abortion measure on the stateās ballot this November.
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The Environmental Protection Agency will invest $3 billion in theĀ leadĀ pipe effort annually through 2026, Administrator Michael Regan told reporters. He said that nearly 50% of the funding will go to disadvantaged communities ā and a fact sheet from the Biden administration noted that ālead exposure disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income families.ā
Itāll be interesting to see all these lead pipes replaced, and watch the amount of religious people take a nosedive afterwards.
It will have an effect in decades. The people that got affected are unlikely to get better. The biggest damage is being exposed to lead during childhood.
I think weāre starting to see this effect from the lead we removed throughout the 80s, everything from crime to religion has been falling for the past 2 decades.
I donāt think it was all lead, but I think itās playing a decent part.
Yeah, but decades is a blink of the eye, as these things are measured. And honestly, I donāt think a fair amount of Congress has even one more decade left in them.
I doubt it. While lead isnāt ideal for delivering water, itās not as bad as you think. Once scale builds up in the pipe it didnāt leech lead. The problem Flint had is they switched water sources and destroyed the scale so it went back to bare lead.
I wouldnāt install new lead pipes but my point is that many old lead ones are probably fine. Ones that arenāt fine so need to be replace though.
Iāve seen this comment before. My counter: can you assure me that, for example, a new homeowner that doesnāt know better wonāt disturb the scale? They wonāt have a leaky faucet and mess with the pipes? Or something like Flint doesnāt happen ever again where necessary infrastructure changes necessitate disturbing the scale?
This āsolutionā only āworksā if you leave it completely alone and never touch it. So donāt get new appliances, never have a plumber fix some things, never update that water main thatās gonna break down any time now. Itās a very short sighted āsolutionā to the problem. Iād hazard itās a good argument for triage. Cities that need new infrastructure anyway go first kind of thing. But fobbing it off as āits fineā isnāt ok.
I donāt think they were saying that we shouldnāt replace them, but rather that itās unlikely to have a marked impact on things like religious adherence.
For the most part, the concerning lead is in the municipal portion of the water supply, not in the areas a homeowner can disturb. (Not all of course, but it was largely phased out of home construction in the 30s). Replacing appliances or having a plumber work arenāt going to cause issues, and since the 80s having a service line or municipal water main break is a quick way to get non-lead installed.
Lead doesnāt contaminate water super fast, the water needs to be in contact with it for a bit before concentrations start to rise to immediately actionable levels. Thatās why the biggest source of concern for contamination are municipal water mains and home service lines: water doesnāt flow as quickly so it can accumulate more contamination, and thereās a larger volume making it harder to flush the contaminated water. (If you have lead household plumbing, letting the water run for a minute or two will reduce the concentration below actionable levels. You canāt do that if the contamination is from the water main)
You are entirely correct that pipe scale is not a āsolutionā.
Thereās no safe concentration of lead, which is why we need to replace all the pipes, a process that started in the 80s. Usually doing it as part of routine maintenance is fine because itās not usually an emergency. The original plan to be done by the 2060s made a lot of assumptions about infrastructure maintenance being done on time, and people not making short sighted dumbfuck choices like the Flint emergency financial manager.
So we need to fix it as quickly as is reasonable, but we donāt need to freak out over it, and we probably wonāt really see many marked changes like we did with leaded gas, just āno huge catastropheā, and average water lead levels dropping from 3 parts per billion to 1 or less.
I donāt see how a homeowner could affect pipes upstream like that. I have been under the assumption they are talking about replacing city/count/state pipes and not pipes that landowners are responsible for. The article doesnāt state either way.
And there is no guarantee shit wonāt get fucked up. But actually listening to people when they say what you want to do will fuck up the pipes sure helps. So, the opposite of what Flint did.
The first time I saw the argument, it was in relation to pipes in oneās home and Iām not an expert on plumbing. I just felt the idea of āleave it alone and itāll be fineā is a really bad one and that it should be pushed back. I did acknowledge municipal pipes a bit, but my argument could use refinement.
IDK how much can even be done with $3 billion. It sounds like a drop in the bucket.
More than 0, and thatās the important part.