EPIC participates in Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative meeting with mayors on water equity

By Maureen Cunningham

On September 15th, mayors across the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence gathered to discuss water equity priorities, initiatives, and needs in their cities, as part of the Mayor’s Commission on Water Equity organized by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative with the US Water Alliance and the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) at the One Water Summit in Milwaukee, with several mayors joining virtually, including pre-recorded comments from Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago. Mayor Cavalier Johnson of Milwaukee convened the meeting as a Co-Chair with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb of the Mayor’s Commission on Water Equity. Karen Dettmer from the US EPA Office of Water and Debra Shore from US EPA Region 5 provided context on the new water infrastructure funding available to states and municipalities through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Janet Pritchard, EPIC’s Senior Analyst for Water Law and Policy, provided comments at the hearing.

About a dozen mayors and other city officials from Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin made statements, with the majority of them outlining their lead service line replacement efforts and needs, and some raising additional issues related to storm water management and combined sewer overflows. They all expressed the need for more funding and support from the federal government. Several of the mayors spoke about the need for technical assistance. 

Although the Biden-Harris administration has previously urged a ten-year timeline for replacing lead service lines, many of the mayors indicated that this timeline is not possible without considerable federal support, with the biggest hurdle perhaps faced by the City of Chicago where Mayor Lightfoot indicated the city’s 380,000 lead service lines will cost $15,000-$26,000 per lead pipe to replace and add up to a whopping eight to ten billion dollars. Mayor Malik Evans of Rochester, New York outlined his lead-free water plan to replace all lead service lines in his city by 2030, using funding he pieced together from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and other discretionary funds, but still expressed a strong need for additional support from the federal government to stay on track. Mayor Ken Johnson of Muskegon, Michigan said that the problem of replacing lead service lines is bigger than the cities can resolve on their own. Mayor Marcus Muhammad of Benton Harbor, Michigan said that the city started out in 2018 as a “Flint 2.0” in terms of their lead contamination and lead pipes but has now replaced 90 percent of them - crediting not only the funding but also the partners and collaboration that were critical in this success.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson of Milwaukee outlined several policy recommendations for the US EPA and for State Revolving Fund administrators related to lead service line replacement funds and general SRFs, which EPIC supports, including to:

• Improve the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) allocation formula so that states with a higher lead in water burden receive their fair share of lead service line replacement funds.

• Set aside 26 percent of lead service line replacement capitalization grants for administration, program management, and technical assistance.

• Promote the full utilization of lead service line replacement set asides for developing and maintaining lead service line inventories, designing and planning projects, and completing related pre-construction tasks.

• Revise state-level definitions of disadvantaged communities to include communities of various population sizes and flexible spatial boundaries (e.g. census tracts) in order to broaden access to principal forgiveness and technical assistance for underserved neighborhoods that are nested within larger water systems or more affluent communities. 

The meeting brought attention to the issue of lead service lines - and the funding and technical assistance that cities and other municipalities will need to replace their lead pipes faster. EPIC encourages more cities and municipalities to make the same strides that some of these mayors are attempting to get the lead out, by joining our movement of lead-free water cities and municipalities across the country.

A full recording of the meeting can be found here, the policy recommendations here and the mayors’ written testimony here.