The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.
“There is no safe level of exposure to lead, particularly for children, and eliminating lead exposure from the air, water, and homes is a crucial component of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic commitment to advancing environmental justice,” the Biden administration said.
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Cue someone making sure to inform you that all those military people, who are definitely 100% ready for an invasion, genuinely need to sit around and do nothing instead of actually making their country a better place.
News flash: these pipes were laid up to 120 years ago, and the Flynt disaster was caused by republican leadership trying to cheap-out on water expenses for a primarily poor community.
Those pipes are all over the nation, under huge cities and small rural communities. This is no small task. Flynt isn’t fixed because it is not easy, and the administration involved was a combination of criminals and incompetents.
Dude, this is not going to happen. They will be exposes to lead for 100 more years, not 10. This is just empty talk. Money for this will be stolen by private companies or corrupt officials. To do projects like this you need a strong central government which US doesn’t have. What was the last big investment in infrastructure they did? Energy lines are shit, railway’s nonexistent, public education sux, there’s no public healthcare and prisons are torture centres. They only ever do things if some corporation can make money off of it. My guess is companies will take money for this and then do nothing, same like happened with fast Internet.
sounds like he is trying to get reelected on more empty promises
this sounds great but when if ever will it happen? and how logistically?
Projects are already underway and have replaced our two lagest lead service lines in the medium-small Illinois city where I live via federal funding over the last year. City literally just applied for the funds from this same program and hired private contractors once the funds were approved. About 3 months of construction on each of the 2 roads under which our main service lines run, and now lead has been fully removed from 60% of residents water supply, with the last 40% to occur over the next 18 months.
It’s been pretty simple.
The only hard part is cost - there are thousands of cities in the US that need to do something. The work is straight forward and easy for a crew to do. However it takes a lot of money to pay that crew (and the materials they use)
Which is exactly why federal funds are necessary for it rather than local. The places that need this most tend to be those with the least money for local infrastructure, but if the money doesn’t have to come from the cash-strapped local budget, that’s not an issue.
Okay right wing trumpet bootsucker anything else you’ve got to whinge about
Do you feel so alone that you need to whinge on the Internet
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This is a hugely underrated win imo. We have no idea the damage lead is doing to us, we can only guess the damage in health problems is in the billions. Politicians usually don’t give a shit about this so for Biden to do so is a big outstretched hand and big achievement
It’s a win, but not really underrated. We can test for lead easily in both the water supply and people, there are some isolated areas it’s bad, but it’s not a problem in most areas.
Republican might loose a lot of it’s voter base
Shouldn’t states and cities be responsible for doing this, not the federal government? People in one state shouldn’t be paying for the failure of another state to provide necessary infrastructure.
You may be surprised at where these lines are. Plenty of blue cities are loaded with them. The rural red areas near me didn’t even get public water systems until the 80s so none of them have lead.
I don’t even have a public water hookup, and I don’t have a water bill either, its great.
Depends on where you live. In Minnesota where I grew up rural areas don’t have public water and wouldn’t think of it - drilling a well is fairly cheap and a small hole gives you far more water than you could ever use. In Iowa where I live now my well is a very large diameter hole and if I’m not careful it will run dry. In Iowa almost all farms have public water supplies.
You forget that there’s currently some us states that have right wing bigots in charge that only care about being bigots
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“Both sides are the same”
They will replace them with PVC or something else that we find out gives us all brain rot or cancer, and the cycle will start all over again.
It’s sure as hell taking its sweet time
Better the devil you don’t know than the devil you do.
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“We don’t want any of your leftist ‘woke’ pipes!”
I’ve long wondered if lead exposure accounts for their behaviors over the past couple decades. Lead that accumulates in the bones over one’s lifetime leaches out into the bloodstream when one becomes elderly, like calcium does with osteoporosis. Cognitive issues and rage are associated with lead exposure.
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Why replace lead pipes at huge costs when you can just shoot criminals?
It turns out that more lead was the answer all along
Think about how many bullets those old pipes can be turned into! This project would practically pay for itself with the cost of ammunition these days.
I love when people who grew up in the 70s tell me the world is so much less safe today.
I worry about this a little bit for myself.
I was just shy of twenty years old when leaded gas sales ended in California.
So I definitely grew up with lots of exposure. Hope it doesn’t dement me out in my final couple of decades.
I’ve long wondered if lead exposure accounts for their behaviors over the past couple decades.
That’s exactly what has happened.
Imagine, if you will, a country that has a lot of land area, which uses personal ground transport to grt around. Imagine if, for decades, those personal transport machines used large, ineffcient engines that ran on a fuel that caused aerosolized lead to be blown into the atmosphere at a staggering rate?
Imagine, if you will, a three by seven inch wooden frame – a frame that’s a gateway to a world of imagination. Wipe your mind on the welcome mat. You’re about to enter…
The Scary Door.
It turns out it’s man.
That’s a tiny door
Do not forget lead paint, pipes and crystal.
Also more recently, people who will cycle 1000 rounds of cheap ammo through sixteen different guns as a hobby and then spread that lead contamination all through their car and home, and they’ll do this every week for years.
Shooting as a hobby isn’t new, but the volume and frequency people are doing it has definitely gone way up in some parts of the US in the past 30 years.
I hadn’t thought of that one.
I remember watching a grand thumb (gun nut YouTuber) video where he found out about the lead poisoning and started wearing an N95 mask at the range.
He switched to lead free ammo IIRC. His buddies made fun of him.
I worked on a community gardening project in the city when I was in grad school. We had an ordinary urban residential lot and wanted to plant a community vegetable garden.
The soil was so incredibly contaminated with lead from 70 years old leaded gasoline that we had to scrape off the top 6 ft of topsoil and send it to a toxic waste dump, and the replace all of that. Then we built raised garden beds to mitigate lead uptake in the plants.
Most cities in the world are still heavily contaminated and lead will never go away.
I’m not sure about that, I’ve had lead poisoning for thirty years and I’m still not stupid enough to support those assholes.
it’s dose dependant, and while your particular neurological effects may be different, in population studies for almost every country where lead has been banned, there is a direct relationship to violent crimes as well. Lead gasoline use goes up, crime rate goes up. Lead gasoline stops, and as the lead is measured to leave the environment, the violent crime goes down.
Intelligence is only one possible thing affected. It’s also highly associated with emotional impulsiveness.
Oh I’m sure. I have many of those issues, but then I also did before I was poisoned and treated for it. How much it affected me is hard to say though overall because I’ve got adhd and have always been impulsive… My temper has been an issue since I was born, so I have a lot of practice suppressing it.
To me it seems there’s a lot more at play including lack of critical thinking skills and not just intelligence when it comes to their support.
How did you find out you had lead poisoning?
I burned my leg by getting splashed with a bit of molten metal when I was working at a metal foundry when I was around 21 years old. My family doc tending to it ran some tests and next thing I knew I was on medication for it… some kind of horse sized pills that were nearly impossible to keep down.
Late edit: Chelation therapy I guess it’s called.
People typically can see a ~3 IQ point deficit with long term lead poisoning.
I guess thankfully I had a couple to spare :)
Lead makes Republicans
It’s funny, because the hexbears basically have the same “Biden bad” reaction. Almost like there’s a weird amount of ideological overlap.
Not a hexbear, but the leftist “Biden bad” narrative wouldn’t demonize investing in infrastructure, they would call out shit like unconditional support for Israel or failing to meaningfully improve social safety nets via Medicare for All, or other such measures. Biden is a Liberal, at the end of the day, and that’s not going to please any leftist except by not being a fascist.
Never underestimate the effects of extremism on rational conclusions
Came here to say this. I look forward to whatever their excuse is to not solve the toxic drinking water problem. And likely immediately spend more on DoD or cut taxes to the rich.
DoD
Dungeons or Dragons?
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That would be infinitely cooler and more useful.
Sadly it’s the department of defense.
Department of Defense
I can already hear my boomer father bitching
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I know the GOP will hate this plan, and want people dumber.
my little town is replacing all the water mains… when the streets above them need repair or rebuilding, along with the lines to customers where needed. they’ve done two streets in the last ten years, each about 8-10 blocks long. they’ve got a long ways to go. 10 years ain’t nearly enough time unless someone is gonna pony-up a ton of cash.
unless someone is gonna pony-up a ton of cash.
I think the ruling class has been posting record profit year over year for checks notes generations.
We can take some of their excess wealth so we have safe drinking water.
I mean, it’s entirely possible to do that faster.
They replaced the pipes in Flint in only a few years. Your city just isn’t prioritizing the project.
Also, they’re allocating $50b for it.
My town is putting pipes next to the road instead of under it. That way they can work on pipes without tearing out the road, and when working on the road they don’t have to worry about the pipes (as much - I assume they still have to run under)
Is this a temperate environment? No freezing during winter?
They are underground, just not under the road. They are in grass which is easier to dig up.
If almost guarantee the federal government will throw a couple billion at this, the local utilities will mismanage it, and the project will be completed in 2050 after another round or two of investment and maybe the army Corp of engineers taking over from bubba’s utility coop
TIL that America uses lead water pipes… WTF
Now look at the UK. They still use lead sheet for roofing, as well as piping.
It’s actually pretty common around the world. Most places stopped putting in new ones but haven’t gone back and phased out the old ones.
The UK and Germany for example didn’t discontinue the practice until the 70s.Usually there’s a coating in the pipes that prevents contamination, allowing utilities to replace the pipes with more modern replacements as they do routine maintenance. There’s a big focus on doing that maintenance ahead of schedule in the US after a series of very public incidents where that coating was damaged and lead got in the water causing serious issues.
Coating on lead pipes? I highly doubt that. The whole point of using lead is that it’s malleable, corrosion resistant and cheap.
The coating is usually a scale build up and not an intentional coating.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190403080506.htm
It’s not like it’s plastic lined, but there’s a coating that prevents lead from leeching into the water supply that’s built up by additives in the water.
If you want more info, just look up lead pipe scale.
Not that plastic coating would be much better with what we’re learning about that now.
People have been using lead for building materials and pipes for ages. The Romans had a ton of lead stuff.
Unless your city was torn to shreds by war or was built after the 50s, you probably have some lead lines too, haha.
America used lead water pipes
Lead pipes can last 100+ years
America is ~250 years old.
Lead pipes installed in early 1900s would still be functional today.
Suddenly everything starts to make sense.
Those that purposely destroyed the water systems with cuts in Flint Michigan should have been quartered in a public square.
Sadly in reality they probably received bonuses and perks.
I linked an article in one of my comments that describes the criminal cases. They did not get off scot free as of 2021.
I know people were charged for their involvement in the crisis but from what I can tell they got out of the charges. I think there may be a case that is still pending, though
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A friend of mine was starting into a tirade a while back about how terrible it is that all water pipe installed in houses today is plastic even though we know BPAs are killing people. I suggested that they might be better than lead pipe. We still high five from time to time.
Does he mean PEX? Because that’s HDPE and is BPA-free.
This is one of those times I’m like why are mass shootings always schools and bars and not assholes like the people responsible for this
Wasn’t it a theme there for awhile to go Postal? I can’t recall if that was about co-workers, management, the general public or all of the above?
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Those that caused the switchover to Flint River water that resulted in the disaster surfacing definitely should be drawn and quartered, no question. Snyder and his city managers put all this nonsense in motion and should be charged with crimes against humanity.
However, it’s also a systemic, deeper problem in the US. Flint’s pipes didn’t suddenly become terrible overnight. The entire water system was in disrepair for decades. The only reason it didn’t surface sooner was they were regulating the water going through it to hold the demons at bay. Even when it was working, pre-disaster, the water was safe to drink, but horrible from a drinking water perspective.
The whole system was a giant leaking piece of junk that basically kept working due to positive pressure pushing contaminants out of the leaks, and the pH level being maintained so the old pipes wouldn’t start leeching into the water. That a GM engine plant had to switch water sources because the water was damaging the engine construction is just mind-blowing. Human bodies are vastly more delicate than engines.
Flint’s not the only one either, many American cities with aging water infrastructure that wasn’t properly maintained all have/had similar problems.
We are such a short-sighted country that seems to so quickly forget that our infrastructure requires constant maintenance and updates. I really think the generation that got to live among all the New Deal and post WWII infrastructure just thought they lived in a magic time where all this stuff just exists forever, rather than realizing it takes stewardship to keep things “the way they are”. Now, we on the back end, reap the rewards of everything falling apart at the same time, faster than we can fix it.
We are such a short-sighted country
We see about as far as the next quarter’s profits. That seems to be the marker. Apparently, the future isn’t really worth looking at past that.
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I’ll take plastic over lead any day
Key word is “proposal”, which will be used for the election. But will not be actually fought for, or if somehow makes it through will likely be gutted to give corps money and just retain the name. I am thinking it would be stopped just like all the bullshit was on technicalities that we never hear of except when shit that would help people is brought forward (the shit involving that stupid-ass parliamentarian a few years ago being a great example). And the mass public of liberals or otherwise the “um I really don’t care about politics” folks will just remember it was mentioned at some point and assume it was done. Just another failure of our larger problem of mass amnesia. Similar to how so many idiots voted for Biden over Bernie because they thought they both were for Medicare for All, since Biden had stated multiple times that “healthcare is a right”. Fuck him, his party, the Republicans, corpo media, and especially the capitalist ruling class that owns both parties!
Waiting for a Republican to call this a woke, gay, Chinese conspiracy or whatever.
Why? I’m sure there are some vocal extremists who will shit on anything Biden does, but I know quite a few republicans and all them support this move. Do democrats and republicans really live under the illusion they’re so different from one another instead of almost exactly the same like they are?
I used to be a republican when I was young, mostly because they understand economics better, but then later I found myself disagreeing with them on social/censorship/privacy issues. One side wants to impede freedom one way, and the other wants to impede it the other way, that’s when I realized that both parties are hypocritical by nature. And I doubt it was knowingly designed this way, but all either side ever does is end up growing government and removing freedoms aside from the rare big wins towards actual liberty.
Didn’t mean to go into rant mode, it’s just annoying to me when democrats call republicans stupid or vice-versa. No, neither side is stupid. They have reasons for their beliefs, and while they do go through mental gymnastics to convince themselves their platform isn’t hypocritical, they’re both still coming from a place of trying to improve the world. But you bring that up and then people will use “whataboutism” all day to point to specific examples that seem particularly indefensible on one side or the other. This then makes productive discussion impossible. We all need to acknowledge that the “other” side aren’t heartless bastards who don’t care about the rich or who don’t know how money works or whatever ignorant complaint you have, actually take time and learn.
Edit: Truth struck much too hard for many people lmao
Republicans are heartless evil bastards. Abortion bans. LGBT existence bans. Book bans. No gun controls. Underfunded education. Climate denial. Unchecked capitalism and inflation. Housing and stufent debt crises. Grifting trillions from taxpayers. Witch hunts against politicians family members who stayed out of politics. Sketchy relationships with the Russians, Chinese, and Saudis.
Fuck off, both sider. They are not the same.
They are the same. I’m sorry that you see yourself so much in them that you feel the need to lash out at me, but if that works for you whatever I suppose.
What are you talking about?
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Oh really? Let’s hear why you think this, I bet it’ll be good.
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Republicans are already against it.
Bless your heart.
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