Lead Out: Flint residents still grapple with lead pipes as removal efforts ramp up across U.S.

(InvestigateTV) — “Lead isn’t this harmless thing. It’s a very potent neurotoxin. It does permanent damage.”

Melissa Mays is not quoting a scientific paper or journal review. She knows firsthand the dangers of lead exposure and lead poisoning.

As a Flint, Michigan resident since 2001, Mays has experienced the actions taken by her city in trying to resolve lead issues in its water system. She believes the city didn’t take the proper steps to help its residents.

Now, almost a decade later, those issues still remain as the federal government is prioritizing the elimination of lead pipes in water systems across the country.

“When you say Flint, they know that our water was bad, but for some reason, it’s gotten to where people just assume we’re fixed,” Mays said.

In 2014, Flint officials explored a way to help the city save money by switching water providers from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. The city and state officials weighed their options - but ultimately decided to temporarily use the Flint River as a water source instead as they built a new pipeline.

Before the switch, the Flint River water wasn’t properly treated, leaching lead from the city’s old pipes into people’s homes. Officials didn’t immediately check for corrosion in the pipes.

The ripple effects of that switch sparked a water emergency and a national outcry for change to protect communities across the country, urging states to remove lead service lines.

A decade later, the issue still persists for much of America.

DeWaun Robinson is a Flint native and has been outspoken about the water crisis from the start.

“We have a lot of children that have been impacted by the water crisis,” Robinson said. “We have a lot of families that have moved out of the city of Flint. We have lost a number of school buildings in that time. We’ve been going through many transitions. And so, it’s just very difficult to really just kind of talk about the epidemic of the water crisis and all that entails.”

But Mays and Robinson told InvestigateTV that the city of Flint still hasn’t fully healed from the exposure of lead in its water services lines.

“You know, we went from going out in the streets, going door to door, showing this discolored water in rashes and doing the lead tests and bacteria and gathering information to still doing that right now in 2024. It’s unreal. We had to sue to get the lead service lines replaced, and that’s not even finished,” Mays said.

She is one of the plaintiffs who originally filed a lawsuit in 2016 against the City of Flint for violating the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The lawsuit said the city failed “to comply with federal law that requires cities to deliver safe drinking water to the public.”

The City of Flint entered into a settlement agreement in 2017 to replace the lead pipes by 2020, but the project hasn’t been completed.

A federal court recently held the city in contempt for violating a federal court order that required the city to reach a certain milestone to “implement a plan to replace all lead and galvanized service lines at Flint residences to help reduce lead contamination in the city’s tap water.”

The court found that the city did not finish conducting service line replacements in a timely manner and “has yet to complete outreach, excavations or restoration” for its lead service line program.

InvestigateTV sat down in an exclusive interview with Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley to discuss where the city stands.

Although Neeley did not want to delve into the court’s order and litigation, he said to replace lead service lines, you have to be very “methodical about the way you approach it.”

“We had to deal with the eroded trust with the government and residents,” he said.

Neeley says the city has so far replaced nearly 30,000 service lines and that they are working on replacing the remaining 30 service lines at residential addresses this summer and will continue the restoration.

But many residents like Mays and Robinson said that 10 years is too long - and that there’s no excuse.

Mayor Neeley defended the city’s timeline, saying that many communities around the country are also facing the same problem.

An important push across the country but a daunting task

Removing water service lines contaminated with lead is not just a Flint, Michigan problem. The EPA estimates that 9 million pipes bringing drinking water into America’s homes contain lead - but InvestigateTV found that it could be more.

InvestigateTV contacted every state’s environmental protection agency to better understand their task and the magnitude of removing lead pipes.

Many of them couldn’t tell us the number. Some states did.

Massachusetts estimates there are 220,000 service lines in their state with lead. Colorado estimates it may have more than 111,000 service lines.

North Dakota says it projects having more than 26,000 service lines that need to be replaced.

Washington DC, another city that experienced a water crisis in the early 2000s said that they’ve replaced more than 5,000 lead-contaminated lines and estimate they need to replace approximately 42,000 more.

‘We are prioritizing the issue’

Although the federal government originally banned new lead pipes in 1986, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not require water utilities to inventory them or systematically replace them until recently.

Wendi Wilkes, the director of infrastructure implementation at the EPA, says they are working hard to bring the administration’s Get the Lead Out Initiative to life.

The 2021 Bipartisan infrastructure law provided $50 billion of investment into America’s water infrastructure, with $15 billion dedicated to replacing lead pipes.

“We’ve set up really our largest ever technical assistance initiative and GLO, the Get the Lead Out Initiative, as part of that. GLO communities will receive technical assistance, kind of along a range of different ways to get the lead out of their water systems. So, it starts with identifying where the lead service lines are,” Wilkes said.

The EPA told InvestigateTV that $15 billion is the largest investment it has ever made to specifically address lead pipes, but officials know that’s not enough.

Wilkes said the Get the Lead Out Initiative is just the first step. The EPA also advised homeowners to contact their local water supplier about concerns of potential lead pipes connected to their homes.

The EPA also has provided states with grants and loans to both start their lead pipe inventory process as well as for funding removal.

The City of Chicago was awarded a $336 million loan to help replace more than 30,000 lead service lines. The EPA’s recent update to the lead and copper rule under the Safe Drinking Water Act requires all communities and non-community public water systems (such as schools, and restaurants that have their own water supply, usually a well) to create a lead service line in their water service area by October this year. But part of the problem is knowing where lead service lines are.

‘Unworkable, underfunded and unnecessary’

While some states provided numbers and are actively starting the process to obtain lead service line inventory, 15 Republican attorneys general across the country are pushing back against the EPA’s new lead and copper rule.

They wrote in a letter to the EPA that “the proposed rule creates a heavy-handed mandate on states that is nigh impossible to comply with and is also a financial burden on already squeezed middle-class families. It is unworkable, underfunded, and unnecessary and should be withdrawn.”

The letter also said: “The proposed rule requires not just states and public water systems, but every homeowner to replace every lead pipeline in the country within the next ten years. The sheer expense and scale of this rule is staggering. It will affect millions of homeowners, raise utility prices for American families, and cost, by some estimates, $60 billion in compliance alone—almost none of which is offset by the federal government.”

Despite concerns from several attorneys general, Wilkes is optimistic that states can get the job done with the grants and loans provided by the EPA and federal government.

“It is daunting, and especially at the community level, it can be scary not to know where to start or where the lead pipes are, or if you’re a homeowner, whether or not your pipe is lead,” Wilkes said. “That’s why EPA is providing this technical assistance to help communities get on the road to understanding their scope of the problem and then replacing those lead lines.”

Other states, such as Delaware, Illinois, Rhode Island and Wisconsin have taken proactive actions to finance projects to help with the removal.

In Galesburg, Illinois, the city is offering free water testing to homes and has a look-up tool that allows homeowners to check if they are served by a lead line.

One of the cities that accomplished getting the lead out of their water pipes is Benton Harbor, Michigan. The city replaced 100% of their 4,500 lead service lines.

Wilkes says she thinks the removal of every service line in America can be accomplished in a decade.

“We have really good examples across the country of communities who are well on their way to reaching that 10-year mark, some perhaps even faster. It does take commitment and this administration is saying we’re committed,” Wilkes said.

Solutions to help fund water systems and homeowners

While some states are making an effort to replace lead pipes, cities and towns nationwide often run into roadblocks and stipulations, especially with private lines and private property.

That’s why Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) is working on legislation to help with the financial headache some families and small businesses could face. He understands finding and replacing lead service lines can be costly to a municipality.

Bennet’s Financing Lead Out of Water (FLOW) Act draws on the experience of Denver Water, a public water utility that is financing the removal of all public and private lead service lines in its service area at no cost to its customers by issuing tax-exempt bonds.

Denver Water found that issuing tax-exempt bonds for this purpose required a costly and time-consuming analysis of its service area as part of the “private business use test” administered by the IRS to qualify for the tax exemption, adding months to its effort. The FLOW Act provides a solution to this issue for public water utilities.

To do so, the Act would provide an explicit guarantee in the tax code, allowing public water utilities to issue tax-exempt bonds to help pay for the removal and replacement of both public and private lead pipes.

Bennet says he worked with Denver Water to get tax-free financing from the IRS.

“But we decided, you know what, it’s crazy. Every municipality and every water utility in the country is going to have to go through this, we should change the law,” he said.

Bennet said many projects have lagged or remain incomplete because of the costs of replacing private lines.

The Flow ACT would help reduce the administrative hurdles cities and water systems face when helping homeowners and those in replacing private service liens.

The bill also takes steps to ensure funding for lead pipe replacement in the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to assist more Americans.

Bennet said he is trying to find Republican support for the bill because he believes it’s a bipartisan issue all parties could agree on. He is hopeful that pipe replacements nationwide will get done in the next 10 years as well.

“I think having the resources there finally ought to inspire people to want to identify where the problems really are and get after it,” Bennet said.

Flint resident Melissa Mays says she is tired of the excuses and does not want to hear states say that it can’t be done. She’s been fighting for clean water in Flint for years.

The question that she and many other Americans drinking from tainted lines have is, will this remain a priority or will they have to sound alarms again in 2034 if the federal push to replace all lead pipes fails?

“All of the ways we’re failing the youth and our children, this should not be one of them. This is not any kind of new fancy legislation,” Mays said. “Lead pipes are bad. Get it out and stop giving it to the people that you’re supposed to be protecting.”

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