22 Million Americans Get Water Through Lead Pipes, But GOP Rep Wants To Permanently End Fed Efforts To Fix The Problem

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A landmark Environmental Protection Agency rule enacted at the end of last year sought to address the lead crisis—which threatens the health of millions of Americans—by tightening limitations on toxic lead and copper in drinking water. But that might not be the final word. U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) introduced a resolution last month to block it and forever bar the EPA from writing a substantially similar rule again. To do so, he’s relying on the Congressional Review Act, a mechanism that allows Congress to vote to permanently reverse a rule finalized late in a previous session.

EPA’s action, finalized last October, lowered the allowance for lead in drinking water and beefed up requirements for lead service line replacement. Medical and public health experts have found that there is no safe amount of lead in the human body. Lead services lines have been recognized as a main cause of lead poisoning since the late 1800s, but today, an estimated 9 million lead services lines still deliver drinking water to more than 22 million Americans.

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If the new resolution becomes law, it would reverse the 2024 Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI)—the latest iteration of the first lead and copper drinking water regulations, enacted in 1991—and reinstate the revisions enacted at the end of Trump’s first term. Many environmental advocates said the Trump-era rule weakened safe water protections. NRDC, Earthjustice and attorneys general from nine states and Washington, D.C., sued in response, claiming it would violate the anti-backsliding provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The LCRI, finalized in October 2024, was heralded by environmentalists as a step forward, although it came with limitations: The law does not require water utilities to pay in full for lead service line replacements, which could lead to unaffordable costs for low-income homeowners or neglect from landlords. The rule also made exceptions for certain cities like Chicago, which has the most lead service lines of any city in the country, allowing it about 20 years to replace all its lead service lines, a timeline that disproportionately impacts the city’s Black and brown residents.

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Advocates have pressed several Republican lawmakers who’ve previously supported lead reduction initiatives, including Rep. Thomas Kean (R-N.J.), Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.) and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), to publicly confirm that they will not vote for the resolution. Lawler’s office said the congressman does not support the resolution. Mackenzie’s office declined to comment and Kean’s did not respond. Forever barring a similar rule would have lasting consequences, said Virginia Tech’s Lambrinidou, who also served on the EPA’s National Drinking Water Advisory Council working group on a lead-rule update in 2015. “What we’ll be looking at is essentially state-mandated lead-in-water exposures that occur routinely, are both low-level and acute, and are exceedingly difficult to detect [and] by extension, difficult to address and hold anyone accountable for,” Lambrinidou said.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13022025/epa-rule-to-reduce-drinking-water-lead-potential-reversal/