Some cities are digging up water mains and leaving lead pipe in the ground
Many American cities have been excavating water mains, revealing lead pipes and leaving them there. The work’s disruption of the pipe can also spike lead levels, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.
Tldr; The last few yards of pipes are owned by the property owners. Cities are replacing their lead pipes just fine, but property owners aren't. These people want the government to pay for replacing pipes on private properties.
These people are likely the same people who vote for tax reductions and plead for a 'small government'.
It makes no sense for government to pay for new pipes for private properties. Let the property owners pay for it.
How do the owners know if they have lead pipe though? I have no idea about my home. I'm guessing not since it was built in the 80s, but I would have to dig it up to find out.
Age of home would be a good indication. Otherwise, you’d have to find the service line, and inspect it. You can google how.
In my city the water works has a database of houses with lead laterals. I don’t think it’s 100% accurate but it’s pretty close.
Failing that, you can go to your basement and inspect the lateral itself. Lead is not very hard to identify if you can see and touch any part of the service line.
https://www.nrdc.org/bio/erik-d-olson/how-can-i-find-out-if-i-have-lead-service-line
According to the article, it isn't just about property owners who refuse to pay, some poorer houseowners are just not able to afford paying to replace the pipes because it's a pretty high cost.
There is a project to replace them in my city, but there are something like 60,000+ homes that need to be switched over and they only get to a few hundred each year.
If there is nothing wrong with the lateral, the city will pay for the half that is on their side and you pay the other half. That is fair, but you're still shelling out $4,200 for your half, which basically doubles your taxes for the year. A lot of people can't afford that, especially right now.
The people who can't afford to have it fixed are then drinking lead filled water and giving lead tainted water to their children, causing expensive cognitive issues that impact education costs and incarceration rates in the future.
So maybe the people complaining are conservatives who want to have their cake and eat it too, but no matter who the complainers are, this is an issue that needs to be addressed because it impacts us all.
These people are likely the same people who vote for tax reductions and plead for a ‘small government’.
How do you figure? Seems just as likely these are big government should do everything types In reality, I'd be surprised there is any ideological vonsistency and most(given the frequent stats given on Americans lack of emergency funds) can't afford the high bills to replace the main on their property.
My city was the first in the US to completely eliminate lead pipes. It had prohibited the installation of new lead pipes in 1928, but had allowed those already in place to remain. In 2001 a law was passed requiring all lead pipes to be replaced, including those that belonged to property owners. The city paid half the cost for homeowners as well as replacing all of its own lead pipes. The project was completed in 2012.
I'm proud to live in a place that looked at the science and fixed the problem, despite the cost.
That's pretty neat. It must have cost a fortune to get that done.
It cost almost 20 million, although that was spread out over the decade it took to do all the work. That's still a lot for a city of just under 300K people.
