‘Classic Junk Science’: New Biden-Harris Lead Pipe Rule Could Bring $90 Billion Price Tag For American Ratepayers

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule Tuesday that requires the replacement of every lead water pipe in the country, potentially placing $90 billion of costs on U.S. utility ratepayers.

The Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI) decision mandates that drinking water systems across the country remove and replace every lead pipe within the next decade, marking a key step in President Joe Biden’s push to remove lead from American households. A November 2023 estimate found the initiative could cost as much as $30 billion for utility companies to implement, but the American Water Works Association (AWWA) said it could cost as much as $90 billion, with the expense likely to be passed on to ratepayers.

“We are concerned that most, if not all, regulated systems will not have the resources needed to meet EPA’s ambitious timeline for lead service line removals,” AWWA wrote in comments to the EPA regarding the rule back in February. “We are also concerned with the potential impacts on households that cannot afford higher water bills, as increased compliance costs are directly passed on to customers in many cases.”

The EPA estimates that up to 9 million homes across the U.S. receive water via legacy lead pipes, with the agency emphasizing many are in low-income and minority communities.

“The EPA’s new lead rule will begin to reverse the massive public health disaster of lead-contaminated tap water that has affected generations of our children. Every person has a right to safe and affordable drinking water, no matter their race, income, or zip code,” Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in the EPA press release. “NRDC has had the privilege of working with residents of Flint, Newark, Chicago and beyond to help secure this meaningful rule and stop the flow of toxic lead from the tap into water glasses in homes across the nation.”

Environmentalists and public health officials frequently use the 2014 Flint, Michigan, drinking water crisis to justify their call for lead pipe replacement. However, the crisis began when Flint’s financial challenges forced the city to switch its water supply to the Flint River, corroding lead pipes and contaminating the drinking water, according to NBC News.

“The entire lead scare is classic 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, said in a Tuesday post on X. “It is the dose that makes the poison. That is true for all substances including lead, but lead hysterics, AKA the entire public health bureaucracy, are fond of saying that there is no safe exposure to lead.”

“EPA estimates that the benefits of the rule will be up to 13 times greater than the costs, including preventing the loss of IQ points in children and avoided deaths and heart disease in adults,” an EPA spokesperson told the 🏢Daily Caller News Foundation. “There has never been more federal funding available to get the lead out of drinking water and do so affordably.”

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include a statement from an EPA spokesperson.

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