SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Biden administration announces plan to replace 100% of lead pipes in US homes
The Biden administration on Thursday announced a "whole of government strategy" to remove dangerous lead from Americans' drinking water, including billions of dollars to begin replacing 100% of the lead pipes servicing the nation's homes.
Environmental groups praised the plan, which includes a promise to begin the process of strengthening the nation's drinking water standards to reflect the science showing that lead is toxic for children at any level.
But lawyers at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has been leading efforts to fight lead, said they worry that the plan lacks a solid timeline and fails to deliver enforceable requirements.
The set of actions announced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) included the release of the first $2.9bn of $15bn approved in Biden's infrastructure plan for local water agencies to begin replacing lead pipes and called for the efforts to focus on the low-income communities who face the most risk of lead poisoning. It also listed 15 new actions across 10 federal agencies to address lead dangers from both water and paint.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 18 2021, @12:24AM
It's kind of interesting that when the spending is to help ordinary people, there's a ton of hand-wringing about the deficit, but when it's tax cuts for the rich and powerful or more bombs to kill brown people in foreign countries, we've got the money for that. During the great recession, we could have bought all the distressed property underlying the crisis for a fraction of the cost of bailing out the financial institutions. In this case, rather than give everybody financial support, we get a bunch of loans that didn't make it to people that actually needed help.
We had $20k per unemployed person, but no money for essential workers after giving all those PPP loans.