Biden announces proposal to replace all lead water service lines in US within 10 years

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 1017 points – Biden announces proposal to replace all lead water service lines in US within 10 years
abcnews.go.com

The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.

“There is no safe level of exposure to lead, particularly for children, and eliminating lead exposure from the air, water, and homes is a crucial component of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic commitment to advancing environmental justice,” the Biden administration said.

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Can't wait for the GOP to sabotage this so they can oWn ThE LiBs: "Lead free pipes are for socialists!"

I've long wondered if lead exposure accounts for their behaviors over the past couple decades. Lead that accumulates in the bones over one's lifetime leaches out into the bloodstream when one becomes elderly, like calcium does with osteoporosis. Cognitive issues and rage are associated with lead exposure.

I've long wondered if lead exposure accounts for their behaviors over the past couple decades.

That's exactly what has happened.

Imagine, if you will, a country that has a lot of land area, which uses personal ground transport to grt around. Imagine if, for decades, those personal transport machines used large, ineffcient engines that ran on a fuel that caused aerosolized lead to be blown into the atmosphere at a staggering rate?

Do not forget lead paint, pipes and crystal.

Also more recently, people who will cycle 1000 rounds of cheap ammo through sixteen different guns as a hobby and then spread that lead contamination all through their car and home, and they'll do this every week for years.

Shooting as a hobby isn't new, but the volume and frequency people are doing it has definitely gone way up in some parts of the US in the past 30 years.

I remember watching a grand thumb (gun nut YouTuber) video where he found out about the lead poisoning and started wearing an N95 mask at the range.

He switched to lead free ammo IIRC. His buddies made fun of him.

I'm not sure about that, I've had lead poisoning for thirty years and I'm still not stupid enough to support those assholes.

it's dose dependant, and while your particular neurological effects may be different, in population studies for almost every country where lead has been banned, there is a direct relationship to violent crimes as well. Lead gasoline use goes up, crime rate goes up. Lead gasoline stops, and as the lead is measured to leave the environment, the violent crime goes down.

Intelligence is only one possible thing affected. It's also highly associated with emotional impulsiveness.

Oh I'm sure. I have many of those issues, but then I also did before I was poisoned and treated for it. How much it affected me is hard to say though overall because I've got adhd and have always been impulsive.. My temper has been an issue since I was born, so I have a lot of practice suppressing it.

To me it seems there's a lot more at play including lack of critical thinking skills and not just intelligence when it comes to their support.

How did you find out you had lead poisoning?

I burned my leg by getting splashed with a bit of molten metal when I was working at a metal foundry when I was around 21 years old. My family doc tending to it ran some tests and next thing I knew I was on medication for it... some kind of horse sized pills that were nearly impossible to keep down.

Late edit: Chelation therapy I guess it's called.

People typically can see a ~3 IQ point deficit with long term lead poisoning.

I guess thankfully I had a couple to spare :)

I worry about this a little bit for myself.

I was just shy of twenty years old when leaded gas sales ended in California.

So I definitely grew up with lots of exposure. Hope it doesn't dement me out in my final couple of decades.

I worked on a community gardening project in the city when I was in grad school. We had an ordinary urban residential lot and wanted to plant a community vegetable garden.

The soil was so incredibly contaminated with lead from 70 years old leaded gasoline that we had to scrape off the top 6 ft of topsoil and send it to a toxic waste dump, and the replace all of that. Then we built raised garden beds to mitigate lead uptake in the plants.

Most cities in the world are still heavily contaminated and lead will never go away.

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I can already hear my boomer father bitching

Came here to say this. I look forward to whatever their excuse is to not solve the toxic drinking water problem. And likely immediately spend more on DoD or cut taxes to the rich.

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It's funny, because the hexbears basically have the same "Biden bad" reaction. Almost like there's a weird amount of ideological overlap.

Not a hexbear, but the leftist "Biden bad" narrative wouldn't demonize investing in infrastructure, they would call out shit like unconditional support for Israel or failing to meaningfully improve social safety nets via Medicare for All, or other such measures. Biden is a Liberal, at the end of the day, and that's not going to please any leftist except by not being a fascist.

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Huzzah! Another great move by the Biden administration that will probably be overlooked by most commenters, like his labor board appointments that led to the recent union resurgence were.

To be fair, a banana now costs $0.67 when it was $0.54 under Trump

How many Biden fellators does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Hooray Biden for doing less than the absolute bare minimum!!!!

Do you do literally anything besides endless serial shitposting about how much you hate Joe Biden? It's incessant. Get a grip, fucking weirdo.

Those who smelled it dealt it.

More than 2/3rds of democrats don’t think he should run. I have a feeling your head is in your ass

He's doing a great job. He's just too fucking old to go another four years.

But I'm certainly not going to pass on Biden to vote for a dumbass tyrant that's just about as old.

I'll look for someone to vote for in the primary, if there is one.

(I copied one of my comments verbatim here to save time)

Oh, yeah. He hasn't kept any promises. None at all.

You don't have to like him or his goals, but please refrain from lying about him. It's bad form.

I'm afraid your opinion of the bare minimum is not the universal definition of it. You shouldn't be surprised when people differ with you on that.

When everything's below the bare minimum, it becomes a meaningless metric. You'll still have to rank the available options, and there can still be a huge difference between those options.

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Those that purposely destroyed the water systems with cuts in Flint Michigan should have been quartered in a public square.

Sadly in reality they probably received bonuses and perks.

Those that caused the switchover to Flint River water that resulted in the disaster surfacing definitely should be drawn and quartered, no question. Snyder and his city managers put all this nonsense in motion and should be charged with crimes against humanity.

However, it's also a systemic, deeper problem in the US. Flint's pipes didn't suddenly become terrible overnight. The entire water system was in disrepair for decades. The only reason it didn't surface sooner was they were regulating the water going through it to hold the demons at bay. Even when it was working, pre-disaster, the water was safe to drink, but horrible from a drinking water perspective.

The whole system was a giant leaking piece of junk that basically kept working due to positive pressure pushing contaminants out of the leaks, and the pH level being maintained so the old pipes wouldn't start leeching into the water. That a GM engine plant had to switch water sources because the water was damaging the engine construction is just mind-blowing. Human bodies are vastly more delicate than engines.

Flint's not the only one either, many American cities with aging water infrastructure that wasn't properly maintained all have/had similar problems.

We are such a short-sighted country that seems to so quickly forget that our infrastructure requires constant maintenance and updates. I really think the generation that got to live among all the New Deal and post WWII infrastructure just thought they lived in a magic time where all this stuff just exists forever, rather than realizing it takes stewardship to keep things "the way they are". Now, we on the back end, reap the rewards of everything falling apart at the same time, faster than we can fix it.

We are such a short-sighted country

We see about as far as the next quarter's profits. That seems to be the marker. Apparently, the future isn't really worth looking at past that.

A friend of mine was starting into a tirade a while back about how terrible it is that all water pipe installed in houses today is plastic even though we know BPAs are killing people. I suggested that they might be better than lead pipe. We still high five from time to time.

Does he mean PEX? Because that's HDPE and is BPA-free.

This is one of those times I'm like why are mass shootings always schools and bars and not assholes like the people responsible for this

Wasn't it a theme there for awhile to go Postal? I can't recall if that was about co-workers, management, the general public or all of the above?

I know people were charged for their involvement in the crisis but from what I can tell they got out of the charges. I think there may be a case that is still pending, though

I linked an article in one of my comments that describes the criminal cases. They did not get off scot free as of 2021.

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Just another day on which I as a European am absolutely shocked how shit the quality of life in the US is.

Europe has lead pipes as well, buddy.

They're perfectly safe as long as idiots don't change the water supply to one that's more acidic without buffering the pH.

Hell, England and Wales have nearly 3x more than the entire US.

That isn't perfectly safe. That is normally safe, but once in a while something will go wrong and they become unsafe.

If it goes wrong long enough after the pipes have been in service it's barely an issue iirc because there is now a coat of corroded lead inside the pipes that does not cause lead poisoning

That corroded lead can sometimes break off and then you get lead again.

When people say europe they usually aren't thinking of countries such as Russia, Turkey, or the UK.

What. I can maybe give you Russia ("Eastern Europe") and Turkey (seems more culturally Middle East than Europe), but most people are absolutely thinking of the UK. What other group would they be part of?

We currently have the freedom to drink lead tainted water, can you say the same?

Yes. 25% of domestic residences still use lead piping in the EU, compared to 10% in the US.

Europeans "Try Not To Talk Shit About Something You're Actually Worse About" Challenge:

Impossible.

But it feeeels like they should be better! Don't bring facts into the Europe self-suck contest

Do they even have people in wheelchairs in Europe? Would really suck ass for those people if true.

That data is still from 2009 though, but sadly there doesn't seem to be a newer statistic. Since that time many changes were made to push for the removal of old lead piping in the EU.

Anyway the threshold for lead in drinking water in the EU is 10ug/L since 2013.
Since 2020 a regulation has been in effect with the goal to have less than 5 ug/L drinking water at the consumer until 2036 everywhere in the EU.
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125733

The US has a threshold of 15 ug/L.

https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/leadtoxicity/safety\_standards.html#:\~:text=EPA's%20action%20level%20for%20lead,systems%20is%2015%20%C2%B5g%2FL.

https://extension.psu.edu/lead-in-drinking-water

ok do prison populations

European here, how is that relevant?

We are shit at stuff, Americans are shit at stuff, your comment does not solve anything.

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Yeah! Tell that bad British person to shut up about my freedom water! They almost made me drop my crayon and I'm trying to find dot #6! I can't wait to find out which shape these dots are going to make me draw... There's seven dots and the word "stop" in the middle, so I'm thinking a school bus!

The funny thing is that England has more residences with lead pipes than the entire US.

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You don't even have pipes in Europe. You drink water that you squeeze out of your sheep's wool

It’s worth noting that 9.2 million homes is an extremely small percentage of American homes and I’d say almost all of them are extremely rural homes or dying rural towns that just need relocated. Think of North Dakota as akin to the Siberian oblasts or northern Finland, neither get a lot of infrastructure care because no almost one is there. This is the Biden admin trying to look out for the little guy that’s been ignored the last century

He should do high speed internet next. My mom has been stuck on a 3mbps WISP since 2007.

Agreed, the ISPs pissed away the billions they got in the early 2000s. It’s time to pony up another few billion but let the military do the work this time then hand the actually completed project to gouvernement ran ISPs.

My dad is still paying frontier like $80 a month for 4mbps that doesn’t work half the time

Eh, it doesn't need to be installed by the military, but it definitely needs to be a public works project.

And if the telecoms push back, it's time to start an audit on where that tax money went.

But yeah, AT&T's fiber trunk line runs 50ft from my mom's front door, but they wont even put a dsl relay out there (it's been 2 years away for the past 20 years)

I only say the military because they’re answerable to the executive branch, the public ISPs are beholden only to shareholders who do not have the best interests of the public in mind. If given the opportunity the ISPs will squander it again and there’s nothing an after the fact audit will do about it, the military will at least complete the job even if it takes longer and is slightly over budget.

And by military I mostly mean army Corp of engineers and whichever division wants to offer up its IT ops crew for the setup

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While we're digging shit up, lets lay some fiber.

AT&T after taking my tax money: "hahahahahahahahahahahahahah no"

Amazing that this has not been done decades ago.

To be completely fair, a layer builds up in the pipe which stops the lead being an issue unless you royally fuck up like Flint. That said, it still should've been fixed

As someone who thankfulky doesn't like in the un-united states of america How exactly did flint royally fuck up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

They were buying water from Detroit's water system. In order to save money, they switched to getting it from the nearby river, but they failed to account for how the new water source would interact with their pipes. They didn't treat the new water correctly and it corroded all their old lead pipes, dumping lead into the water and giving everyone lead poisoning.

Even years later, after they switched back to Detroit water, they're still having problems because the damage to the pipes is already done.

They switched to a water source that wasn’t treated with orthophosphates. This change in water chemistry created an environment where the lead would dissolve off and be replaced with other metal deposits. My layman understanding is the water was treated in a way to bind lead to the pipes and the untreated water created an environment where the effect was counteracted.

“Orthophosphates create a mineral coating that keeps toxic lead stuck to pipes.”

“The absence of orthophosphates made the lead vulnerable to dissolving off the pipes and into the water supply. Meanwhile, other metals like aluminum and magnesium appeared to take the lead's place.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/study-confirms-lead-got-flints-water

Well, the appointed officials switched to a water source and specifically chose to not treat it with required chemicals to save money.

Slightly different than just switching water sources.

Thank you, I wasn’t entirely confident that part got proven or not so I didn’t want to inappropriately make the statement.

It's such a staggering amount of work and money that I think is hard for most people to comprehend. Though, if dispersed properly, will benefit local workers as they usually require they get paid prevailing wage. Which can be pretty fucking high depending on where you live.

And even once all of the lead service lines are replaced, that's just from main to the meter at most. All of the internal fixtures are the owner's responsibility, and you better believe tons of old houses are still full of lead pipes.

This is something that is going to take decades, and you're absolutely right that we should have started decades ago.

Germany outlawed installing lead pipes in 1973, this year operating them got outlawed, though already ten years ago the permissible lead concentrations were so low as to be basically impossible achieve if you had even short runs of lead pipes. All the main lines got replaced IIRC in the 80s, latest, can't find numbers right now, though apparently they rarely used lead there in the first place.

Also, btw, if you're already digging up water pipes it's quite easy to install some cable ducts while you're at it, put all those power and telco lines underground and stop looking like a 3rd world country. That kind of last-mile infrastructure should be managed by municipal-level monopoly, if an ISP wants to sell you something they can hook up to the municipality's IXP and rent the rest of the way to your house at fixed, fair, rates. It's a natural monopoly: It makes as much economical sense to run more than two power or telco connections to a house as it makes to run more than one street to your house: Costs a lot of money to run that second street and as soon as you did your competitor is going to lower their prices, which they can do because their investment already amortised, and leave you stranded with your investment because why would the residents of the house switch to your offering if your competitor is cheaper. There's an opportunity when switching from copper to fiber but fiber will last for the next 1000 years so it's not really a solution.

Come on now, you're actually making sense, we don't do that here in the US. Money and the amount of effort required rule everything.

It's just another case of "it costs too much to fix it, so just keep slapping a bandaid on it and kick it down the road", just like the rest of our infrastructure. Yet we have billions available to "defend" ourselves 🙄

More than billions, I think our defense budget was $766 billion in 2022 alone, at around 12% which was actually lower than 2021 which cost taxpayers 15% and 801 billion.

It's.. it's a big big problem, especially in a time where the U.S hasn't had a war on it's soil in a long, long time.

I get that we go to other countries and help out a bit get involved but we have issues on our own turf killing us from the inside.

Yeah, I just saw a YouTube video where the US has "frozen" the access to mega-yachts owned by Russian billionaires, but they can't seize them because they can't legally prove that the billionaires own them since they're registered in one country and owned by a shell corporation in another country. So if we (and other countries who are doing this) can eventually prove that they own said yachts, we can sell them, but until then we have to pay the constant upkeep on them to keep them in pristine condition... Which costs like 10 million a year per yacht...and we have multiple of them🤦‍♂️

No money to pay our citizens more, invest in our own infrastructure, or fund programs that our citizens need!

Nope, none of that. Can't even support our veterans that fought in the past wars that taxpayers had to pay trillions for but they can afford the salaries of the soldiers currently out there. It's like when a corporation cuts the 401k's of thousands of employees then turns around and hires thousands more...

The yachts ordeal is yet another example. All this $ frivolously spent on excess before basic needs of citizens are being met. The U.S could damned near be a utopia if we'd elect some people with common sense and quit voting in corrupt politicians.

I could rant about this for hours as it's just basic stuff. It's petty and boring so read on at your own risk.

We can't afford guns until the needs of the common people have been met.

We can't afford to imprison people for trivial stuff when they're not an active threat to society.

Healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

Food is a right. No one should have to decide between paying the rent and eating a proper meal.

Housing is a right and shouldn't be a for profit industry. Buying up tons of land in a scheme to get wealthy isn't good for anyone.

Banks just.. shouldn't exist the way that they do. Neither should the credit system, predatory loaning practices etc. Prices just keep going up due to this.

If banks/credit ceased to exist and loans stopped being made, then the price of things would have to adjust to reflect what the average person can actually afford which just makes sense right? If an average person can't make enough to afford their own home at regular wages within a few years by their self then either they aren't getting paid enough or asking prices are way too damned high.

There are just some practices in this world that are bad for it. Everyone knows the shit but no one will do anything because the people with the power to actually enforce change are benefitting too much from the same system to kill it.

Oh, and another one. Flint Michigan is supposedly enacting an (iirc) $9-10 million dollar bill to repair/replace their pipes in order for the people their to have clean drinking water and not get sick or die from lead poisoning. $9-10 mill would make all that difference yet our government won't pay it even though we're spending the better part of a trillion each year blowing things up. How petty is that? Can't take a penny out of our war money so people can have clean drinking water.. pathetic!

Yep it's disgusting. They're only willing to put money into things that will (potentially) make them money.

That, and bombs. Nice username btw

Thanks same to you 🤣

I wanted something completely different from what I used on Reddit (I didn't think I would still be using it 11 years later so I went with the name I used with everything), and couldn't think of anything, so I used the name of one of my 3 year old niece's books hahaha

Haha! Idk why but I somehow love you as a person already lol, that's all I needed to know you're a good dude or dudette

I actually just listened to a podcast about NYCs water supply. To back up your claim, they started pipe #3 around the 1970s and only recently finished (or should have by 2021, the episode was from before then)

Portland replaced most of its water and sewer pipes, AND built a massive 21 ft diameter sewer bypass and storage line 250 ft below the city over the course of about 10 years. When I was living there, the city went up and down every building on every street in my neighborhood to put in new sewer and water connections. Those crews were fast.

NYC is just too big, old and bureaucratic compared to other US cities.

Those crews were fast.

Doing whole cities and streets in one go is always the better option: The crews know what they're doing, all the material and materiel is already on site and scheduling is uncomplicated.

Norderstedt's utility hooked up the whole city to fibre 1999 to 2002, total investment 43 million Euro for just over 80k inhabitants, roughly 540 Euro per head... but that number is a bit misleading the utility only made a loss of 10 million over that time span, or 125 Euro per inhabitant. A couple of years later all the money was recouped and they started expanding to neighbouring villages and the north of Hamburg. Asymmetric gigabit for 50 bucks (upload actually costs ISPs money while download gets paid by whoever's upload that is which is why asymmetric makes sense even if the connection is symmetric).

Kinda hard to do nowadays as the second Deutsche Telekom gets wind of any such initiative they suddenly decide that laying down fibre to replace their copper would, after all, make economical sense. Which is the reason why elsewhere here I'm advocating for municipal monopolies: Municipalities should be able to say "ok you didn't want to invest here, now it's too late you don't get to compete".

(And just in case btw you thought T-Mobile was a grand and nice company: No it isn't. It's a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary. The only reason they are customer-friendly in the US is because they're up against the baby bells there, in Germany Deutsche Telekom is the bell, created by splitting up and privatising the postal service, they own pretty much all the copper everywhere in the country).

This has been often speculated as being the cause of the "Stupid American" stereotype. Good decision

That seems implausible. Lead pipes are common pretty much everywhere and it's usually not a problem due to a coating on the pipes.

It's just an issue in the US because there's been a few notable examples of that coating being damaged and causing contamination, which creates political will to do the replacements that everyone is doing at an accelerated pace.

Most places, in the US or not, just replace them during routine maintenance. The UK and Germany should have theirs replaced by 2100, if nothing comes up to make them accelerate the process.

The US hasn't been good about replacing pipes in general, there's even a good amount that aren't even documented in some areas.

Didn't they pull out some wooden pipes somewhere in the US within the last couple years? I remember seeing an article about it.

I believe someone found wood pipes still in use, it may have been flint, since they got a complete overhaul of their pipes.

30 years ago Boston was trying to map their pre revolutionary war wood pipes. I would expect flint was built with metal pipes, as that area is mostly known for iron.

hydrofluorosilicic acid is the cause of all the problems with lead pipes. It is being used as a replacement for standard fluoride

This year Germany passed a law to completely remove all lead pipes until January 2026.

But the allowed levels of lead in drinking water have already been lowered so much since 2013 (10 microgram per liter, this has been lowered again since to 5 microgram per liter) that any water that passed through a lead pipe cannot realistically fulfill the requirements, thus there are only extremely few households left with any lead in their pipes.

Coating the pipes is not a way out of this, since Germany has expressly forbidden this as a way to renovate.

Oh, I'm not saying we should coat the pipes, I'm saying that it's not a massive continuous crisis is because there is a coating on the pipes created by the water treatment.

We definitely should replace all of them because that coating is too easy to damage and there's no reason to take the risk, but "lead pipes" is unlikely to be a US specific health issue like was originally insinuated.

but "lead pipes" is unlikely to be a US specific health issue like was originally insinuated

With this I agree wholeheartedly, the biggest factors for differences between the rest of the developed world and the US, including USians being considered more agressive, less intelligent, less patient and with less empathy are definitely located in different fields.

Imho. culturally religiosity, difference in education, worldlyness and levels of societal cohesion are the biggest factors, along with good old prejudice against the militarily superior.

I've seen leaded gasoline cited, but not lead pipes.

There was lead in so many products in our parent's generation, not just the water pipes and gasoline. Cosmetics and paint are also two notable ones that, combined with all the other sources of lead, increased exposure to hazardous levels.

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This is great. 10 years seems long, but it is a huge project. Glad it will be started soon.

Edit: Aw shit. This is only a proposal. At least we are talking about it.

Huh, my reaction is how would you even find them all so quickly

There's likely records of most currently used infrastructure. At least enough that the amount you have to go spelunking for would be negligible.

These are service lines, as in assuming all the mains are already lead-free, these are the feeds onto each house. Many of them owned by the homeowner, not the utility. An estimated 9 million of which are lead.

When’s the last time leaded pipes were allowed? Surely at least half a century ago. I find it hard to believe there are good records that old, for every house, many of which lines are not even owned by the utility.

I’m picturing something much more exhaustive, like:

  • search for all properties over half a century old (or whenever the last time leaded pipes were allowed)
  • filter out any with a record of replacing the service
  • test. Goto every fricken one and test

I have no way of knowing what records the water utility has but my house is almost 80 years old and the town’s property records are awfully spotty. And I’m in one of the newer houses in my town - my search included some back to 1890

Edit: 1986. Leaded pipes were allowed that recently, wtf. ( and Florida is number one in leaded pipes remaining: that explains a lot)

You don't need to do that though. Unless there are records otherwise you can just assume it is lead because they all are. Bring in a underground crew to the neighborhood and they can go house to house replacing service lines. Transporting equipment to one house for this is often more expensive than the work itself, but since they are doing an entire neighborhood they can do 10 houses in a day and the cost isn't too much. Just dig the pipe into wherever, then go inside and hook it up.

Of course many houses have lead pipes as well. That is a lot more money. I'm working on getting the lead out of my house (copper pipes, but old enough to assume they have lead solder), but there are a lot of pipes in the walls that I don't really have an easy way to get at without a major remodel. (I have a RO drinking water system to every sink so the lead pipes are mostly used for hand washing not drinking)

I think service water line replacement takes longer than a day. Probably a half a day to dig the trench and expose the utilities - and hopefully they aren't under a driveway or a roadway, and then do the connection. Repave afterward.

The other issue is a lot of houses have lead pipes and lead solder in the copper piping, so they may still have life contamination after replacement of the water lines.

I just has natural gas installed, the outside work was a couple hours, but a crew that did a neighborhood could do a lot of things in parallel

I think they were banned that year but basically nobody installed them after the late 70s.

But yeah some places are dabbling with machine learning or algorithmic data set collection. Most are just using what historic records they have and doing shovel tests for the rest.

And within the home, there's a lot of local, federally-funded programs where your water department will come out and test to see if you have lead pipes, and either help or completely cover the replacement costs.

I assume you can test the water at the outlet for lead.

Most of the time these pipes are not actually leeching lead into the water supply. Most of the time. The whole problem is kind of that it happens just often enough, and just locally enough that monitoring doesn't catch it immediately.

The water authority where I live makes a point of saying they keep the water on the alkaline side to prevent leaching lead from pipes and solder. Presumably that costs money

They must know where at least some of them are so I guess they can start with those and work outwards on the connection. After all I lead the pipe is likely connected to another lead pipe.

Then I guess it's just a matter of doing a lot of water monitoring for the remaining pipes.

Nope, you have to use historic records or dig holes in the ground. Lead Service Line Inventory projects can take a while, and many cities are already going as fast as they can.

30+ years after we found out they were bad for us "guys, we should talk about replacing those pipes..."

Lots of other pipes have been replaced, it's just a few hours that are left. Detroit, Pittsburgh and other older cities.

Good. Drinking water is easy more important than many people realize. I hope we are always updating our pipes to the current standards.

Here you go.

"An initial estimate is that 25% of domestic dwellings in the EU have a lead pipe, either as a connection to the water main, or as part of the internal plumbing, or both, potentially putting 120 million people at risk from lead in drinking water within the EU. "

As of 14 years ago! And Europe has a lot of former communist countries that hasn't fully reached Western European standards yet.
Led has been illegal to use in many contexts for decades in EU, including water pipes, and for instance electrical wiring and soldering.

At what level though and how was the lead content assessed?

High levels of lead has been illegal to use in US water systems since 1986. Regulations have gotten more and more strict since then. The EPA's current goal is ZERO lead, but we still have too much in the water.

It just doesn't appear to be that much better in the EU, if at all.

At what level though and how was the lead content assessed?

You obviously don't understand, in piping led was used as in actual led, not just contaminated metals with trace amounts of led. Trace amounts too have been banned for many years in mostly anything people come into contact with. Like porcelain colors, and paints where it was used to avoid for instance mold.

Zero led has been the standard in almost anything here (Denmark) since the 70's, and it's been an EU standard for at least 2 decades.
I cannot take seriously that EU should not be way way ahead of USA, maybe with the exception of former Soviet block countries.

You obviously don’t understand

I assure you I am fully aware of the many ways lead has made its way into water in both Europe and the US including literal lead pipes. Actual lead pipes have been banned in the US since 1986 as per my link but of course many remain.

Denmark appears to be ahead of most of Europe, but it's not just former soviet countries that struggle. England and Wales have lead pipes running to an estimated 25% of households and don't expect that problem to be cleared up by 2040 or later.

England and Wales are no more EU though, they don't have to follow EU regulations.

But yeah many EU countries still have some areas with lead pipes, even Germany, France and so on. It seems to be hard to track

They're still in Europe, and I said Europe, not the EU. Also Brexit was in 2020 and I'm relatively certain those pipes were there before that.

Oh yeah I forgot UK, but to be fair it's about 45 years since I heard they still used it, despite evidence dating back to the Roman empire that it is toxic. I got the impression UK was the only place in Europe that still used it, obviously possibly excluding the soviet block who were always way way behind on everything.

Still to claim EU isn't ahead of USA is wrong:

https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/metals/an-update-on-the-lead-free-by-2014-mandate-europe/

Apparently Ireland had a problem too, but apart from that the problems are mostly old German buildings that have led in their plumbing.And then Italy that has led lined aqueducts that aren't used anymore, why that's worth mentioning in the report IDK?

So I maintain EU doesn't have nearly the quality problems USA has with water supply, not with led and not with any other toxins. IDK why England is so backwards in this regard, but maybe it's because they had the first industrialization in the world, and safety wasn't as much of an issue back then.

https://kbin.social/m/news@lemmy.world/t/668177/-/comment/3862164

In short:
since 2013 EU has 10 ug/L limit. since 2020 a goal was set for 5 ug/L to be achieved until 2036.

EPA current limit is 15 ug/L. Yes, they have set a 0 goal, but with apparently no timeline, so until than there will still be many areas with 15 ug/L. Bidens proposal would probably set this 0 goal into a 10 year timeframe, making it much better than the EU goal.

It should be noted that 0 is probably not realistic at all because even bottled water is allowed to have 5. His plan is to replace the service lines, but people in older houses can still have internal lead piping. This is mostly the issue with the UK's water. There's pretty much no lead (<2, which is background levels tbh) going to people's houses, but because we've got a load of 100+ year old houses all over the place, they will still have more lead than people in newer homes.

But I don't think the level is really the issue. <15 is probably fine.

The issue is that a bunch of poor people get a lot more than that and nobody has done anything about it. This plan should have been announced in 2014 when the problem first occurred at Flint.

This is a hugely underrated win imo. We have no idea the damage lead is doing to us, we can only guess the damage in health problems is in the billions. Politicians usually don't give a shit about this so for Biden to do so is a big outstretched hand and big achievement

Republican might loose a lot of it's voter base

It's a win, but not really underrated. We can test for lead easily in both the water supply and people, there are some isolated areas it's bad, but it's not a problem in most areas.

Can you imagine if this turns out to be the thing that was needed to calm you lot down?

In a major new study (conducted decades ago) it turns out that Lead in your water/food/air is bad for you

People used to use leaded gas in cars, planes...hell...maybe even trains. Naturally, this was bad for you. Some planes still use leaded gas!

I know the GOP will hate this plan, and want people dumber.

Waiting for a Republican to call this a woke, gay, Chinese conspiracy or whatever.

Why? I'm sure there are some vocal extremists who will shit on anything Biden does, but I know quite a few republicans and all them support this move. Do democrats and republicans really live under the illusion they're so different from one another instead of almost exactly the same like they are?

I used to be a republican when I was young, mostly because they understand economics better, but then later I found myself disagreeing with them on social/censorship/privacy issues. One side wants to impede freedom one way, and the other wants to impede it the other way, that's when I realized that both parties are hypocritical by nature. And I doubt it was knowingly designed this way, but all either side ever does is end up growing government and removing freedoms aside from the rare big wins towards actual liberty.

Didn't mean to go into rant mode, it's just annoying to me when democrats call republicans stupid or vice-versa. No, neither side is stupid. They have reasons for their beliefs, and while they do go through mental gymnastics to convince themselves their platform isn't hypocritical, they're both still coming from a place of trying to improve the world. But you bring that up and then people will use "whataboutism" all day to point to specific examples that seem particularly indefensible on one side or the other. This then makes productive discussion impossible. We all need to acknowledge that the "other" side aren't heartless bastards who don't care about the rich or who don't know how money works or whatever ignorant complaint you have, actually take time and learn.

Edit: Truth struck much too hard for many people lmao

Republicans are heartless evil bastards. Abortion bans. LGBT existence bans. Book bans. No gun controls. Underfunded education. Climate denial. Unchecked capitalism and inflation. Housing and stufent debt crises. Grifting trillions from taxpayers. Witch hunts against politicians family members who stayed out of politics. Sketchy relationships with the Russians, Chinese, and Saudis.

Fuck off, both sider. They are not the same.

They are the same. I'm sorry that you see yourself so much in them that you feel the need to lash out at me, but if that works for you whatever I suppose.

4 more...
4 more...

my little town is replacing all the water mains.. when the streets above them need repair or rebuilding, along with the lines to customers where needed. they've done two streets in the last ten years, each about 8-10 blocks long. they've got a long ways to go. 10 years ain't nearly enough time unless someone is gonna pony-up a ton of cash.

If almost guarantee the federal government will throw a couple billion at this, the local utilities will mismanage it, and the project will be completed in 2050 after another round or two of investment and maybe the army Corp of engineers taking over from bubba’s utility coop

They replaced the pipes in Flint in only a few years. Your city just isn't prioritizing the project.

Also, they're allocating $50b for it.

unless someone is gonna pony-up a ton of cash.

I think the ruling class has been posting record profit year over year for checks notes generations.

We can take some of their excess wealth so we have safe drinking water.

I mean, it's entirely possible to do that faster.

My town is putting pipes next to the road instead of under it. That way they can work on pipes without tearing out the road, and when working on the road they don't have to worry about the pipes (as much - I assume they still have to run under)

Is this a temperate environment? No freezing during winter?

They are underground, just not under the road. They are in grass which is easier to dig up.

TIL that America uses lead water pipes… WTF

It's actually pretty common around the world. Most places stopped putting in new ones but haven't gone back and phased out the old ones.
The UK and Germany for example didn't discontinue the practice until the 70s.

Usually there's a coating in the pipes that prevents contamination, allowing utilities to replace the pipes with more modern replacements as they do routine maintenance. There's a big focus on doing that maintenance ahead of schedule in the US after a series of very public incidents where that coating was damaged and lead got in the water causing serious issues.

Coating on lead pipes? I highly doubt that. The whole point of using lead is that it's malleable, corrosion resistant and cheap.

The coating is usually a scale build up and not an intentional coating.

America used lead water pipes

Lead pipes can last 100+ years

America is ~250 years old.

Lead pipes installed in early 1900s would still be functional today.

Now look at the UK. They still use lead sheet for roofing, as well as piping.

People have been using lead for building materials and pipes for ages. The Romans had a ton of lead stuff.

Unless your city was torn to shreds by war or was built after the 50s, you probably have some lead lines too, haha.

Watch as soon as he's out of office it gets put on hold

And it will be described as a Good Thing™

Trump saved us from losing our heritage! We grew off of lead pipes and those damn liberals were going to strip us of that!! Lol I hate that this is an actual possibility.

Fortunately this is an avoidable problem.

Sounds like he's a-Biden by safety regulations.

Key word is "proposal", which will be used for the election. But will not be actually fought for, or if somehow makes it through will likely be gutted to give corps money and just retain the name. I am thinking it would be stopped just like all the bullshit was on technicalities that we never hear of except when shit that would help people is brought forward (the shit involving that stupid-ass parliamentarian a few years ago being a great example). And the mass public of liberals or otherwise the "um I really don't care about politics" folks will just remember it was mentioned at some point and assume it was done. Just another failure of our larger problem of mass amnesia. Similar to how so many idiots voted for Biden over Bernie because they thought they both were for Medicare for All, since Biden had stated multiple times that "healthcare is a right". Fuck him, his party, the Republicans, corpo media, and especially the capitalist ruling class that owns both parties!

a big bold plan to solve a major american problem?

Must be election season.

TBF Biden has passed a ton of great stuff outside of election season.

Some of the very first things he did as POTUS was call for the replacement of the Anti-environmental EPA director and the ICE director, as well as reinstate protections for streams and waterways from runoff and the reimplementation of Criminal-Only ICE focus and 72 hour holding limitations.

The SAVE Act that is reducing Student Loan Payments as low as $0 a month

The Inflation Reduction Act which does everything from lower deficit and climate impact to lowering price of goods

Full support both through supplies and endorsing wider worldwide support for Ukraine against the Russian Invasion

Signed the 2022 update to the Respect for Marriage Act which includes protections for homosexual and transgender couples against discrimination in the search for employment or housing, which previously only force states to recognize interracial marriages from out of state

The massive infrastructure bill with little to no concessions, also avoiding a federal government shutdown

Bipartisan Safer Communities Act helps remove firearms from mentally unstable or convict individuals who likely obtained their firearms after previous president Trump removed the relevant background checks

Called for federal entities to review Marijauna's place as a scheduled drug, and pardoned all previous small offences for the substance

So, not to say absolutely everything he's done was only good, just that his policies have only slowed down or become worse near the end rather than what you implied.

In unrelated news totally not privately owned utility companies are about to sue the government with the argument, "the current Congress didn't sign off on this regulatory change that an older Congress gave the agency the power to do."

This and more in the decade long SCOTUS hates us all crisis.

I'm pretty sure we replaced ours in the 70's. But better late than never I guess.
But we also replaced it for wiring, because you know... it's kind of poisonous.

Fuck yes. We have needed to get rid of that shit for awhile. I'd also love it if we converted over to metric at the same time, but I don't think that's as likely...

"This is blatantly discriminatory against lead!" - John Holmes, National Lead Alliance

Imagine if the next GOP president threw this out just like Trump did to every Obama policy he could. I think one of the most damaging examples was when Trump shut down the federal de-radicalization programs that disproportionally affected white supremacist groups. It's right up there with removing the ICE 72 hour holding limits.

with what money? the billions sent to ukraine? i'm ok with the proposal, but like most things dems dream up, there is little to no thought about funding. this is why most of the time the gop is against it. then people scream about how the gop is against providing clean drinking water. *facepalm

You think billions of cash and gold were sent to Ukraine ? lol

The Pentagon values the hardware and equipment at the then production costs that are just sitting there where either we pay to safely store and maintain the tanks, etc or safely dispose of expired munitions and ammo.

Or, you know, why not send over this surplus we already bought and paid for, paying to store it or destroy it, to a country defending itself from genocidal invaders and help stop imperialism.

Sure, there is overhead to and costs for all this, but it's a drop in the bucket to what you think it is.

Shouldn't states and cities be responsible for doing this, not the federal government? People in one state shouldn't be paying for the failure of another state to provide necessary infrastructure.

You may be surprised at where these lines are. Plenty of blue cities are loaded with them. The rural red areas near me didn't even get public water systems until the 80s so none of them have lead.

I don't even have a public water hookup, and I don't have a water bill either, its great.

Depends on where you live. In Minnesota where I grew up rural areas don't have public water and wouldn't think of it - drilling a well is fairly cheap and a small hole gives you far more water than you could ever use. In Iowa where I live now my well is a very large diameter hole and if I'm not careful it will run dry. In Iowa almost all farms have public water supplies.

You forget that there's currently some us states that have right wing bigots in charge that only care about being bigots

Fucking prick waited until the last year of his administration to announce this 10 year rule which he will only be able to defend for 4 years even if reelected. God damn fucking idiot democratic party.

This is such a weirdly negative take on what's ultimately a good thing, and it fully assumes he had this plan from the beginning.

They will replace them with PVC or something else that we find out gives us all brain rot or cancer, and the cycle will start all over again.

sounds like he is trying to get reelected on more empty promises

this sounds great but when if ever will it happen? and how logistically?

Oh, yeah. He hasn't kept any promises. None at all.

You don't have to like him or his goals, but please refrain from lying about him. It's bad form.

Projects are already underway and have replaced our two lagest lead service lines in the medium-small Illinois city where I live via federal funding over the last year. City literally just applied for the funds from this same program and hired private contractors once the funds were approved. About 3 months of construction on each of the 2 roads under which our main service lines run, and now lead has been fully removed from 60% of residents water supply, with the last 40% to occur over the next 18 months.

It's been pretty simple.

The only hard part is cost - there are thousands of cities in the US that need to do something. The work is straight forward and easy for a crew to do. However it takes a lot of money to pay that crew (and the materials they use)

Which is exactly why federal funds are necessary for it rather than local. The places that need this most tend to be those with the least money for local infrastructure, but if the money doesn't have to come from the cash-strapped local budget, that's not an issue.

Okay right wing trumpet bootsucker anything else you've got to whinge about

Do you feel so alone that you need to whinge on the Internet