RELEASE: EPA sets 10-year deadline for replacing lead pipes

Advocates urge action to ensure safe drinking water in schools

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized on Tuesday a new rule on lead in drinking water. The new policy includes a 10-year deadline for most water utilities to replace lead service lines. This deadline is a significant step for public health as these these approximately 9 million toxic pipes are the single largest source of lead in water in homes and other buildings that have them. In a major omission, the final Lead and Copper Rule does not require water utilities to halt the widespread contamination of schools’ drinking water, as urged by organizations representing parents and educators.

“In setting a 10-year deadline for most utilities to replace lead pipes, the Biden administration is taking the most significant step to protect our drinking water from lead in the decade since the beginning of the Flint water crisis,” said John Rumpler, clean water director for Environment America Research & Policy Center. “But parents should know that the EPA has missed a major opportunity to safeguard water at school, where our kids go to learn and play each day.”  

Lead is particularly harmful to children. While relatively few schools have lead service lines, they often have plumbing and fixtures made with sufficient lead to contaminate water. To ensure safe water at school, advocates recommend installing lead-filtering water stations and installing filters on other taps used for drinking and cooking, as a new law in Michigan now requires. 

Environment America Research & Policy Center and U.S. PIRG Education Fund have been urging the EPA to stop lead contamination since they launched their joint Get the Lead Out campaign in 2017. The groups have published significant research, including a report evaluating state policies on the matter and a map displaying lead contamination at schools. A small but growing number of states and cities — including Michigan, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, San Diego, Portland and Washington, DC — are implementing some version of the groups’ recommended steps for safer water at school.

“The EPA somehow forgot to hand in its clean water homework assignment for schools,” said Rumpler. “But we do have a few extra credit projects in mind to make schools’ water safer.” 

To address the issue in schools, the agency should revamp its grant program guidance documents and cross-agency agreement on child care water to emphasize filters instead of testing.

“We have long known that exposure to lead impairs development, learning and behavior in children. Yet we somehow allowed this toxic metal to be used in the pipes that deliver our drinking water,” said Yana Kucher, the chair of U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s toxics program. “Kudos to the EPA for starting to move lead pipes into the dustbin of history. Now let’s get the lead out of the fountains and plumbing at our kids’ schools.”