But local governments warn that the rules are needlessly expensive, likely unconstitutional and won’t necessarily improve public health.
The most ambitious aspect of the regulations would require water utilities to replace all lead service lines (the pipes that connect water mains to buildings) within the next 20 years.
State environmental regulators also want to lower the threshold of lead taken from home water samples that would trigger more scrutiny of a utility’s water system.
After Flint, Feds and Some States Speed Up Time for Notifying Public About Lead-Contaminated Water Is Flint’s Water Crisis Leading to Lower Test Scores?
The proposal requires utilities to keep track of where lead service lines are in their system; improves water testing to make sure they measure lead exposure in both fixtures and service lines; and guarantees that lead service lines are eventually removed.
But many of the state’s cities and water utilities oppose the new rules, even if they agree that they want to keep lead out of the state’s drinking water.
If 10 percent of those samples contain more than 15 parts per billion of lead, the utility must take steps to address it, including the use of anticorrosive chemicals.
The new Michigan rules would change that threshold from 15 parts per billion to 12.
By making water utilities pay for lead service line replacements on private property, the MDEQ regulations would force utilities to use public ratepayer money to upgrade private infrastructure.
The state pegs the cost at about $500 million, based partly on the costs of replacing lead service lines in Flint.

Over the last 45 years, salinity has increased around 26 percent in the coastal region of Bangladesh.
Salinity causes a hostile environment for the normal crop production throughout the year in the coastal belt of Bangladesh.
As a result, the reduction of food crop production in the coastal region has significant impact on the national economy of Bangladesh.
This conductivity increases the salt in soil and water across the coastal belt in Bangladesh.
Due to increasing soil and water salinity, people in the communities of the Kalapara coastal regions have been suffering from a scarcity of safe water for the production of crops, fish, and livestock.
The majority of people living in the coastal community are dependent on the agricultural production of crops, fish, and livestock.
For this reason, crop production has been negatively affected each year for many decades across the coastal belt of Bangladesh.
However, people have also converted fresh water areas through intrusion of saline water for shrimp culture, increasing the salinity in the surrounding areas and damaging the grazing areas of livestock.
As women drink less water, high blood pressure, heart and kidney diseases are common, which affect the health of new-born babies.
About 70 percent of people in the region depend on pond water for drinking and domestic uses.

Published at 6:00 pm
Speaking to Post Courier yesterday, North Fly’s Nomad Primary school headmaster Mr Noah Dustin said that the people living along rivers and tributaries were still suffering from the ill effects that were wrought in the aftermath of the May 27 quake.
Mr Dustin said that emergency response efforts from the emergency controller Dr William Hamblin and his team are most appreciated and commendable but brought out the fact that there was still a dire need for access to clean water and food.
“The disaster is a natural event and we cannot blame any human or entity for the negative effects it is having on communities.
“I am only bring to your attention the needs we still have because I feel that our needs are being overlooked somewhat as bureaucrats sweep our needs under the APEC rug,” the headmaster said.
He said that many of his students have stopped attending classes because they need to help rebuild gardens and hunt in the deeper parts of the forest to find an alternative source of protein apart from fish.
“Although fish can now be caught, they are scarce and most families still go without fish or protein for weeks,” said Mr Dustin.
Emergency controller Dr Hamblin said last week that restarter kits have been sent out to affected areas and that sixty one water tanks are in the process of being sent to certain parts of Western Province to ease the water woes.
Dr Hamblin said that so far, 56 metric tons of rice, 22 metric tons of canned tuna, corned beef, noodles, flour, assorted cases of cooking oil and salt and 20 cases of water have been dispatched to the main stations of Western Province like Nomad.
Mr Dustin said villagers have adapted to the circumstances and accepted that the mud contaminated water is not likely to clear up for another few months.

Business Insider Cape Town, South Africa, is experiencing a massive drought, preparing for "Day Zero," when the city’s water supply is depleted.
I visited Cape Town for two weeks in May 2017 in the midst of a drastic water shortage, and saw how the city of nearly 4 million is on the cusp of becoming the first modern metropolis to run out of the natural resource.
Here’s what Cape Town’s water crisis looks like on the ground: View As: One Page Slides Start Slideshow » 1/ Cape Town, South Africa, is poised to become the first major city to run out of water.
The coastal city had originally scheduled "Day Zero" — the day in which all water supply would be depleted — for April, but a decrease in usage and a successful increase of the supply has pushed the event back to 2019. Business Insider Source: City of Cape Town 2/ Residents are limited to 50 liters (about 13 gallons) a day, and the city even offers a guideline on how to manage the allotment.
Business Insider Source: The World Bank 4/ Cape Town relies on six reservoirs for the majority of its water, but depleted levels tell a story of the drought.
Business Insider Source: Business Insider 9/ Most years, groups to Cape Town drink tap water, but we were instructed to purchase three-gallon water bottles.
Business Insider Source: WHO 11/ In 2015, 69% of South Africans had access to safely managed drinking water sources, just above the global average and the highest percentage in sub-Saharan Africa.
Business Insider Source: Yale Environment 360 15/ This garden was on the campus of a rural school that produces its own vegetables to save on food costs.
Yet rural farmers have had their water supply from the city’s six dams cut by as much as 87%.
Business Insider Source: Business Insider Previous 1/ Next

Punjab Aparna Banerji Jalandhar, May 27 Villages across Shahkot are prone to a host of diseases, including the dreaded cancer, which they blame on polluted water of the Chitti Bein and the Kala Sanghian drain.
Panch Tarsem Lal says they have seen over 20 deaths in the past few years at Eesewal village.
Similarly at Seechewal village, where polluted water is the key issue, at least 12-13 deaths from cancer have taken place in the past few years.
While a high-pitched campaign was witnessed in the constituency in the past two days, the villagers say they only hope that the winning candidate keeps the promise to provide clean water to the area residents.
Manjit Kaur of Seechewal, who lost her 16-year-old daughter to cancer, says: “After fish deaths, candidates of all parties took the water issue.
We wonder once the elections are over, will they bother about it?” Similarly views were aired by her neighbour Jaswinder Kaur (70), who lost two family members to cancer.
Villages all along the Chitti Bein do not have access to clean drinking water.
Environmentalist Balbir Singh Seechewal says: “The villages across the Shahkot constituency are digging out tubewells as deep as 400-500 ft since until 200 ft, the water is polluted.
We have received assurances from all leaders that they would be working to clean Kala Saghian drain and the Bein.
We only hope that they paid heed to this serious issue.”Kahan Singh Pannu, Chairman, PPCB, said: “We have capped the capacity of the units running at the leather complex at 50 per cent.

But one of the prime motivators for the perverse US, UK, French invasion of 2011 was over a commodity that many people don’t even realise is of supreme value: fresh water.
Even wells by the Mediterranean cost are too near to the sea to produce drinkable water.
According to independent experts, there is enough groundwater in Libya to last for another 1,000 years.
Gaddafi’s River would pump fresh drinking water and water for irrigation into the populated regions of the country, thus literally making the desert bloom and making the country independent in terms of water supply.
Under present global conditions water is itself becoming a highly valued commodity as evidenced by recent reports that Turkey is now trading its water supplies to Iraq in exchange for oil.
Not only could Libya’s vast reserves of groundwater have been exported to poor and developing African nations that Gaddafi had warmly embraced as the world’s foremost pan-African leader, but Libyan experts could have helped other African nations access their own groundwater reserves, thus making such countries less dependant on cooperation with former colonial European powers and the neo-colonial United States.
In this sense a pan-African Great Man-Made River was even more frightening to the destroyers of Libya than a pan-African Dinar.
The triple threat of un-managed population growth, particularly in Africa, climate change and man-made environmental exploitation is going to make water a far more valuable commodity in the 21st century than at any time in modern history.
For Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy and David Cameron, this simply could not be.
This indeed was the plan as much as the plan also included forcing Africa to remain Dollar dependant and energy dependant.

Belle District, Gbarpolu – Students at the government-run Fomba Public Elementary and Junior High School in Belle district are troubled by the lack of safe drinking water and the deplorable state of classrooms.
They are frustrated that the school, which is the second most populated in the district, has no access to safe drinking water.
“I am kindly asking the government to help us get water in our school”.
Another female student, Iran K. Zaza of the 9th grade is worried about the deplorable condition of the classrooms.
“This building our lawmaker built for us is only used by the junior high classes,” she said of a four-classroom building constructed under the Legislative Support Project (LSP) fund.
“Our people started this school building for us.
“Our little brothers and sisters are suffering too; they walk long distances just to come to learn,” student Zaza stressed.
He works along with 14 teachers and five volunteers, who are heavily supported by the PTA.
“It’s regrettable to say that they too have a limitation, if they had the resource and know-how, by now, that their PTA project is finished, hand pump was not going to be a problem.” Meanwhile, John Bellah, town Chief of Fassama and a member of the PTA, says he’s aware of the many challenges facing the school.
“I just hope that something good will happen in our children favor during this Pro-poor government,” added James Seekay a resident of Fassama Town, Belle District.

The community of Oberon in New South Wales is facing mounting pressure to introduce fluoride into the town’s drinking water.
More than 70% of Australians have access to fluoride in their drinking water, in New South Wales that percentage is at 93%.
Oberon, a town of less than 3,000 people, is one of the six councils refusing to budge.
In December, the state government asked those councils without it, to consider it.
But at a recent council meeting, the residents of Oberon passionately debated against putting the mineral in the water supply.
Bathurst dentist Dr Theresa Cook tells Ben Fordham she can tell where a child’s from by looking at their teeth.
I was providing extensive dental treatment – fillings and extractions – on almost every tooth to some children.” Those children were from neighboring Oberon and Lithgow.
Lithgow introduced flouride in 2008, and 15 years later Dr Cook says she is now seeing less and less children with serious dental problems from that area.
“But the trends of extensive decay are continuing from the Oberon district,” she tells Ben.
Dr Cook says the figures reflect double decay in Oberon over Bathurst.

California has an opportunity to be a clean drinking water leader, as it is a leader on the climate front, says Leo Heller, the United Nations special rapporteur, on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.
Lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation impacts rural well-users, city residents, schoolchildren, mobile home communities and churches across the state.
When my predecessor, Catarina de Albuquerque, visited California, what she found shocked her.
Drinking water conditions were akin to those typically seen in a developing country: families without an acceptable level of safe drinking water or sanitation; exposed pipes running through irrigation ditches; crumbling or nonexistent infrastructure.
California is known around the world for its thriving technology sector and for its movement to fight climate change and protect the environment.
This is a different side of California, and it is deeply troubling.
The Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund is based on a simple premise that all must join hands together to ensure universal access to this fundamental right.
Revenues raised will provide sustainable funding for safe drinking water and sanitation to the communities that need help.
The California State Legislature should not miss the opportunity to be a champion of the human rights to water and sanitation when a proposal with an unprecedented array of support lies before them.
I support the swift passage of the proposed Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund.

Rep. Dan Kildee (D), who represents Flint, Mich., said a staffer was not allowed in to a portion of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) summit on drinking water contamination this week.
“@EPAScottPruitt’s lack of transparency and willingness to deny access to Members of Congress and the media is deeply troubling.” Peter Grevatt, the EPA’s director of Ground Water and Drinking Water, said in a statement that the second day of the National Leadership Summit on per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) was not meant for congressional staff.
EPA staff in an email to Kildee’s staff, among others, last week specified that Wednesday was "limited to federal agency folks and states," Grevatt said.
"Both state and federal officials had the expectation that the second day of the Summit would be a government-to-government discussion between federal and state co-regulators who are working together to address this important issue.” Kildee’s chief of staff, Mitchell Rivard, told The Hill on Thursday that the staffer who handles Flint’s water contamination issue was barred from entering on the second day.
“Congressman Kildee was never invited to the EPA’s PFAS summit,” Rivard said in a statement.
“After our office asked to attend, the EPA would only allow our office to attend select parts of the summit, and one of the congressman’s staff was actually turned away at the door during Wednesday’s sessions.” Rivard told The Hill that the incident is part of a larger issue of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt attempting to “limit access at a taxpayer-funded meeting.” “The public has a right to know what’s happening inside their government,” Rivard said.
The EPA’s limits on access to the summit already made headlines on Tuesday when a reporter from the Associated Press, Ellen Knickmeyer, was allegedly physically barred from entering the event by an EPA guard.
Following media outrage, journalists were allowed to enter the second half of the hearing but were still banned from attending the second day.
In an op-ed published in The Detroit Free Press on Thursday, Kildee wrote that these two actions by Pruitt’s EPA “are deeply troubling.” The city of Flint has battled a water crisis since April 2014 when the water supply was switched from Lake Huron to the Flint River, leading to lead poisoning from the city’s water pipe delivery system.
Officials declared the water safe to drink last month and will no longer deliver free bottled water to residents.