The Fight Against Lead: From Flint to 2037
Show notes
A dozen years after the Flint water crisis galvanized national action on lead pipes, the United States has moved from scattered voluntary replacement efforts to a federal mandate to remove nearly all lead service lines by 2037.
Roya Alkafaji of the Environmental Defense Fund and Mason Hines of RESOLVE are members of the Lead Service Line Replacement Collaborative, a coalition of 28 national organizations formed in 2016 to accelerate replacement and share lessons from communities doing the work.
The landscape has changed dramatically since then: federal rules required utilities to inventory their service lines, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law dedicated $15 billion specifically to lead service line replacement, and the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements established the 2037 replacement deadline for most communities.
The number of publicly tracked replacement programs has also grown from 33 in 2017 to at least 270 today, while at least 20 communities have completed their programs.
The Collaborative recently recognized 16 programs and individuals for work ranging from community engagement and funding innovation to technical efficiency, including efforts in Milwaukee, Denver, Newark, Memphis, Greeley, St. Paul, Washington, D.C., and other communities.
Those examples matter because replacing the estimated four million lead service lines still in the ground will require different approaches in communities with vastly different resources, housing patterns, political environments, and infrastructure.
Alkafaji says reaching the 2037 deadline will depend heavily on three things: sustained community engagement, full replacements at no direct cost to property owners, and a local workforce large and skilled enough to do the work.
Hines points to another challenge looming as programs advance—the difficult final stretch of finding and replacing lines connected to absentee landlords, properties with uncertain records, and other hard-to-reach locations.
After a decade of building funding, regulations, inventories, and replacement programs, the next phase is increasingly about execution: applying what successful communities have learned while finding ways to reach the last lead pipes that are likely to be the hardest to remove.
waterloop is a nonprofit news outlet exploring solutions for water sustainability.