On October 8, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a landmark rule aimed at tackling lead contamination in drinking water. Utility companies are now required to identify and replace their lead pipes within the next 10 years, the EPA announced, and the threshold for acceptable lead levels in drinking water has been lowered from 15 to 10 parts per billion — the strictest guidelines since federal regulations were first set in 1991.
The announcement was made alongside millions of dollars in additional funding for lead pipe replacement in Nebraska. Championed by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the new EPA rule is certainly a crucial step in the right direction — but it has some glaring loopholes.
While environmental groups praised the mandate that utilities pay for lead pipe replacement, some noted that the rule does not include lines on private property, leaving homeowners to shoulder the cost. The Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in a press release that closing this loophole “is critical to avoiding the environmental injustices that result when utilities charge individual homeowners thousands of dollars to remove the lead pipes, leaving lower-income and disproportionately homeowners and renters of color continuing to drink lead.”
Lead contamination is already a public health crisis that disproportionately impacts Black, Latinx and low-income communities. In the high profile........