Nick Pope
Daily Caller News Foundation
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) proposed a new rule Thursday that would effectively mandate the replacement of every lead water pipe in the country.
The agency’s proposal would bolster the “Lead and Copper Rule” to require water systems nationwide to remove and replace every lead pipe within ten years if finalized in its current shape. The proposal is a key advancement of President Joe Biden’s long-term goal to get rid of every lead pipe in the U.S.
The EPA estimates that the proposal could cost as much as $30 billion for utility companies across the country to execute over 10 years, costs which the utilities are likely to pass on to ratepayers. The bipartisan infrastructure law allocates $15 billion to help cover those expenses, but the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, a trade and policy group for urban water suppliers, says it has “repeatedly” highlighted several issues that could complicate the EPA’s ambitious proposal, such as elevated costs, supply chain problems, labor shortages and inadequate building records.
“EPA’s proposed Lead and Copper rule is grounded in the best available science and successful practices utilized by drinking water systems to protect children and adults from lead in drinking water,” EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox said of the proposal.
Up to 10 million U.S. homes are connected to lead water pipes, according to the White House. Notably, the EPA’s proposal pays particular mind to removing lead pipes from poor communities.
“The whole notion that there is no safe level of lead is just junk science,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute and a member of the Trump EPA’s transition team, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Biden’s whole program here is a way to funnel money to favored constituencies. It has nothing to do with public health.”
Environmentalists frequently cite the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as evidence that America’s lead pipe drinking water infrastructure can prove to be especially damaging for poor communities with disproportionately large minority populations. However, that crisis started when the poor state of Flint’s municipal finances forced the city to switch its water supply to the Flint River, which corroded lead pipes and contaminated the drinking water, according to NBC News. The crisis was made worse by slow and ill-advised policy responses by local, state and federal officials, Milloy told the DCNF.
While “the water in Flint was bad and polluted,” Milloy emphasized that “it is important to underscore that the whole crisis in Flint had nothing to do with lead.”
Neither the EPA nor the White House responded immediately to requests for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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IMPORTANT NOTE TO WND READERS: Shortly after Hamas terrorists fired over 5,000 rockets from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7 and then proceeded to attack the Jewish state by land, sea and air – torturing, burning, beheading and murdering well over a thousand people, including women, children and infants, and wounding and abducting hundreds more – world reaction was, in its own way, almost equally shocking.
For after the biggest one-day mass slaughter of Jews since the Nazi Holocaust, what followed was an outpouring of celebratory demonstrations, unbridled Jew-hatred, deliriously gleeful support for Hamas and bitter condemnation of the nation of Israel. Not just in the Arab-Muslim world, but throughout the Western world as well, including all across America.
Why? What is behind the explosion of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, pro-terror sentiment in the United States, where Israel has long been one of America’s closest friends and allies? Why are hordes of young “woke” LGBT demonstrators marching in support of Hamas – when Hamas wouldn’t think twice about binding and blindfolding them and throwing them off the roof of a tall building – as they routinely do in the Muslim world?
It turns out there’s one area of agreement that is so powerful, deep-seated and all-consuming that the vast differences between the deranged left and the murderous jihadists melt away into Kumbaya harmony.
All of this and much more is completely exposed in November’s issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled ISRAEL VS. GLOBAL JIHAD: How Jew-hatred, radical Islam and Leftism are pushing us toward World War III. Beyond a deeply insightful dive into why leftists are surging toward radical Islam – which hates and dreams of raping and butchering them – this Whistleblower issue includes fantastic articles by everyone from top Israeli analyst (and former Israel Defense Forces officer) Caroline Glick to Harvest Christian Fellowship’s Pastor Greg Laurie on the current war in Israel and biblical prophecies regarding the End Times … which he says are now upon us.
WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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