On World Water Day, a Spotlight on U.S. Public Water Systems.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect a change in the estimates made by Fitch Ratings, which originally reported that replacing an estimated six million lead service lines across the country could cost upwards of $275 billion.
Fitch has since updated that estimate to “a few billion to $50 billion.” Tuesday is World Water Day, that time of year when the media reminds us that 663 million people globally— about one in ten people—lack access to safe drinking water, the majority of them in the developing world.
Some 100,000 residents in Flint, a predominantly Black city, are still being forced to drink, cook with, and bathe their children in bottled water, after corrosive water from the Flint River leached lead from pipes, joints, and fixtures into the city’s water supply.
The crisis began in April of 2014 when the city, under emergency management, switched its water source from Lake Huron to the toxic Flint River.
This MLive article noted that the governor’s goals include replacing 30 water service lines in an effort to contribute to Flint Mayor Karen Weaver’s $55-million Fast Start program.
An investigation by USA Today released on March 11 revealed that an additional 2,000 water systems across all 50 states have shown signs of “excessive” lead levels in the past four years, impacting an estimated six million people.
Roughly 350 of those systems deliver water to schools and day-care centers, while at least 180 systems violated federal regulations by neglecting to alert consumers about high lead levels, the investigation found.
At an elementary school in Ithaca, N.Y., one sample tested this year at a stunning 5,000 ppb of lead, the EPA’s threshold for ‘hazardous waste.’” Meanwhile, water tests conducted last week in Newark, New Jersey, found that 30 of the district’s 67 schools had lead levels higher than the EPA’s safety threshold of 15 ppb, the New York Times’ editorial board reported on March 19.
In Chicago, where lead service lines feed an estimated 80 percent of properties according to this article in the Chicago Tribune, “city officials still do little to caution Chicagoans about the potential health risks” of lead levels in the water supply, even though a 2013 federal study found that the city’s existing testing protocols likely miss “high concentrations of lead in drinking water.” Earlier this month, the Detroit Free Press reported that replacing an estimated six million lead service lines across the country could cost from “a few billion to $50 billion.” Quoting Fitch Ratings, an international ratings agency, the article also noted that the EPA’s latest estimates for improving the entire water sector ran into about $385 billion through the year 2030, although this projection only included a plan for partial replacement of lead pipes, rather than a complete overhaul.