Two powerful industries, plastic and iron, are locked a lobbying war over the estimated $300 billion that local governments will spend on water and sewer pipes over the next decade.
Traditional materials like iron or steel currently make up almost two-thirds of existing municipal water pipe infrastructure.
By 2020, the average age of the 1.6 million miles of water and sewer pipes in the United States will hit 45 years.
At a July convention in Denver that brought together about three dozen local legislators, Bruce Hollands, executive director of the plastic pipe industry group Uni-Bell PVC Pipe Association, discussed what had gone wrong in Flint, and explained what needed to be done to open up local bidding for plastic water pipes.
Scientists are just starting to understand the effect of plastic on the quality and safety of drinking water, including what sort of chemicals can leach into the water from the pipes themselves, or from surrounding groundwater contamination.
It’s a more proven material,” said Patrick Hogan, president of the Ductile Iron Pipe Research Association, the industry’s main lobby group.
It’s independently tested,” said Mr. Hollands, executive director of the Uni-Bell plastic pipes group.
At the height of Flint’s water crisis, the chief executive of one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of plastic pipes, JM Eagle, traveled to the beleaguered city and offered to replace the city’s lead pipes for free.
That organization, NSF International, displays a picture of the Capitol building on its regulatory resources web page and runs a hotline for questions on regulations and product safety.
The small city of 29,000 saved $2.2 million by using plastic to replace its own 1930s-era water system after state regulators alerted the city to critically needed fixes.