Reading between the numbers: The ongoing story of toxic lead pipes

By Maureen Cunningham, Breeana Gonzalez, Sapna Mulki, and Denise Schmidt

When it comes to lead water pipes underground, there is usually more to the story than meets the eye, and that’s probably the case with the EPA’s announcement on April 4th. Since the passing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), EPIC, advocates, and policymakers have urged the EPA to adjust the formula that allocates federal funds for lead pipe replacement to help the most lead-burdened states. The EPA announcement briefly describes a new lead line identification and replacement formula. Now, the sense of urgency has only increased, not just to replace lead service lines but to identify them. Big federal dollars are at stake.

Though EPIC argued in 2022 that there are plenty of red states with lead pipes, too, we were still surprised by EPA’s announcement that Florida now tops the list of lead-burdened states, with Texas among the top five. With some of the newest housing stock in the country, which usually correlates to low numbers of lead pipes, EPA estimates that Florida has 1,159,300 lead pipes. Florida is getting $88 million more for lead pipe work, as a result.

Those of us from the Great Lakes states have always known that we carry a heavy lead pipe burden, but now we are joined by four states from the South (Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Tennessee) in the top ten lead-burdened states. 

However, numbers for other states were lower than expected.  According to NRDC’s 2021 estimate of the number of lead pipes by state (a widely accepted study), Mississippi had 29,000 lead service lines. According to EPA’s estimates of states’ lead burdens  (developed through the information that came from water systems as described below), the estimate for Mississippi dropped down to 11,098 lead service lines, a nearly 40 percent decrease. Is the decrease due to better inventory efforts that point to lower statewide numbers than previously thought, a lack of reported data from utilities, or something else? We don’t really know. Estimates in other states dropped too: Oregon’s went from 14,000 to 3,530 and Georgia’s from 86,000 to 45,985. These are just a few examples of the 25 states, plus the District of Columbia, whose estimated lead lines decreased in the EPA’s announcement compared with the 2021 NRDC estimates. 

Where did the data come from? 

The Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment is a big name and an even tougher acronym (DWINSA), but this critical survey, updated every four years, is used by EPA to allocate federal drinking water infrastructure funding among states. Allotment of $15 billion from IIJA for five years, specifically for lead service line replacement, should depend on this survey, but past surveys never included questions about lead service line material. According to the EPA, the survey was sent to 3,629 public water systems from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, US territories, and for the first time since 2011, Tribal systems. For reference, there are over 52,000 community drinking water systems across the country - so this survey likely went to the largest of those systems. 

Though the overall survey response rate of 97 percent was impressive, EPA noted that only 75 percent responded to an optional questionnaire on service line material, a rate notably lower than the total response rate. Systems may have ignored the survey because they weren’t told it would be tied to funding, it was a new request, or the system didn’t have the data. The survey also happened in 2021, before the appropriation of $15 billion for lead pipe treatment and detection. If they didn’t know then, they certainly know now.

So, what happens next?

States don’t just have a regulatory obligation to survey lead pipes - they may also want to develop more robust estimates in hopes of correcting the funding allotment formula for future years. At least 45 states have already released their Intended Use Plans (IUP) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, which indicate how they will spend available funding for lead service line inventories and replacement, among other projects. EPIC has conducted an in-depth analysis of these IUPs and will be releasing a dashboard in May 2023 that shows where and how much funding is going toward lead pipe replacement. Some may already be preparing - and soon releasing - their FY23 plans. 

Some states have ramped up their inventory efforts over the last several years. For example, since the start of the Flint lead-contaminated water crisis, the state of Wisconsin has focused attention and resources on the development of a statewide inventory of service lines by material type, and water utilities update their numbers annually. While the new EPA estimates probably reflect better data in those states driven by state policy, we still don’t want states like Mississippi to miss out on critical federal support simply due to a lack of data collection. EPIC is offering technical assistance through the Funding Navigator to communities in Mississippi to secure funding for lead service line replacement and other water projects, so we hope to play a role in helping the state get those numbers updated. But that’s only one state.

A looming October 2024 inventory deadline is included in the federal regulations on lead and copper in water.  What happens when water systems complete the inventories in October 2024, and there are increases in the number of lead service lines, but the federal funding is still linked to a formula based on what will be a dated survey? We hope they will be immediately put to use, at least in time for the FY26 funding allocation.  

The new estimated number of lead pipes around the country is 9.2 million, and EPA states that these numbers are “the best available national and state-level projections of service line counts.” We don’t disagree, but we also know there is much more to the story. Many water systems around the country, at least those we talk to and work with, have not started locating their lead service lines. Regardless, this is an important step forward, and one that we hope gets us closer to ridding the country of toxic lead pipes once and for all.