Billions more may be needed to replace all lead pipes

A new presidential administration likely won’t change federal regulations to remove all lead pipes that took effect under President Biden, according to area drinking water providers.

But water utility operators worry whether enough federal dollars will be available to help dig up tens of thousands of lead service lines in Western New York.

New U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations, which took effect in October, require public water systems across the country to replace all lead service lines by 2037.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill provided a $15 billion down payment for these efforts.

But since the EPA finalized its improvements to the lead and copper rules, it has become less clear how exactly to finance the digging up and removal of the 9 million pipes. The total bill for a project of this magnitude is estimated at between $50 billion and $80 billion, with older cities in the Northeast, including Buffalo and Niagara Falls, facing some of the heaviest bills as a high percentage of their service pipes are lead. BIL payments to states for lead service replacement will end in 2026.

And while the Biden administration has pushed for the replacement of lead pipes in response to public health concerns about lead exposure, it is also unclear whether a new Trump administration, which has expressed hostility to the With respect to environmental regulations, will view the issue the same way, or whether Congress will come together and approve more federal dollars to dig up lead service lines.

It’s a source of concern among water suppliers, local government officials and community leaders.

In Buffalo alone, the most recent estimates for replacing at least 34,000 lead service lines, and possibly as many as 70,000, are $500 million to $800 million, according to Oluwole. OJ » A. McFoy, president of the Buffalo Water Board.

McFoy warned there was no way Buffalo taxpayers could cover those costs.

“We have to find funding. There has to be funding in place. We cannot carry all this burden alone,” he said earlier this month during his final board meeting as president. McFoy left Buffalo to take a job as a city engineer in Houston.

The American Water Works Association filed a petition Dec. 13 in the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, for a review of new improvements to the lead and copper rules that were finalized in October , arguing that implementing the regulations in their current form was not feasible and would be too costly for water consumers.

The AWWA, a nonprofit group focused on water management and treatment that represents 50,000 members, estimates that the cost of replacing lead service lines nationwide could exceed $100 billion .

Sean Costello, executive director of the Niagara Falls Water Board, said he could not predict whether the Trump administration or new EPA leadership would make revisions or rollbacks on lead and copper rule improvements .

“Right now, that’s the requirement in effect and we will comply with it,” he said.

Niagara Falls has more than 18,500 service lines, most of which have not yet been identified as lead, lead-free or galvanized steel.

But the city has more than 13,000 homes built before 1939 — an indicator that many of the unknown lines could be lead.

The Water Board is applying for a $10 million state grant in 2025 to begin removing lead service lines and will continue to do so in subsequent years.

“I think we’ll honestly need more than $10 million a year, if possible,” Costello said.

Costello said water infrastructure and clean drinking water have historically been “bipartisan issues” and he was optimistic there would still be federal funding available for lead service line replacement beyond the $15 billion. dollars from the bipartisan infrastructure law.

The city of North Tonawanda was still in the early stages of determining which of its 12,000 service lines contained lead, but given the number of older homes, it could be significant, with replacement costs in the order of “millions of dollars,” said Chelsea Spahr, city engineer.

“We don’t want this to just fall on the taxpayers,” Spahr said. “The federal government is mandating this thing. How do they plan to help communities achieve this?

Spahr said changes to the lead and copper rule could happen again with a new administration.

“In which direction, who knows? she added.

President-elect Trump has said nothing publicly about whether he supports using more federal dollars to eliminate lead pipes, which have the potential to leach lead, a toxin that can cause physiological and behavioral problems , in drinking water.

New York received $129.2 million of a $3 billion allocation of BIL money in 2024. The EPA projects that in 2023, New York will need to replace 494,007 lead water pipes, or a little more than 5% of all lead water pipes in the country.

But so far, federal allocations to states like New York that have the highest number of lead pipes would cover the cost of only a “small fraction” of replacing service lines, according to an Environmental study. Policy Innovation Center.

“With insufficient funding in the most overburdened parts of the country, vulnerable populations – particularly children, low-income people, and communities of color – will likely continue to be at risk of contaminated drinking water lead for much longer,” the report said. study published in August found.

In New York, for example, only 9% of lead pipes could be replaced under BIL’s current budget. For comparison, Texas, which received $28.6 million, would have enough money to replace all of its lead pipes nearly one and a half times over, according to EPIC’s analysis.

In most municipalities in Western New York, homeowners are responsible for maintaining water lines, at least from the house to a curb stop and, in some cases, from the house to the main water line.

Franchelle CH Parker, executive director of Open Buffalo, a community nonprofit that helped Buffalo Water identify whether 36,000 unidentified service lines contain lead, said the work of replacing the lead lines is d ‘vitally important to public health and that individual owners should not be stuck with these costs. Given the country’s considerable financial resources, everyone has the right to clean and affordable water, she added.

Many low- and moderate-income homeowners in Buffalo can’t afford to pay out of pocket for a new water line, Parker said. Replacing lead lines can cost on average between $8,500 and $12,500, according to the EPA.

“We’re talking about single mothers who scraped together a few pennies to buy their first home,” she said. “We cannot blame Buffalo residents. This can’t happen.