More than 200,000 lead service pipes carry drinking water to Missouri families, according to a .
New lead water pipes have been banned for more than 30 years. But the EPA estimates that 9.2 million American households still get their water through aging lead pipes.
Just over 2% of those are in Missouri, ranking the state 14th in the country for its number of lead service lines. The that the state would get $106.4 million to update its water infrastructure through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The EPA鈥檚 regional administrator, Meghan McCollister, said in a news release that the funds would go to 鈥渆nsure that Missourians have access to clean drinking water.鈥�
鈥淢issouri鈥檚 investments through this fund will aid in securing needed resources to address critical infrastructure needs, threats to drinking water systems such as lead pipes, and emerging contaminants such as (forever chemicals).鈥�
Over the next 20 years, the EPA estimates the U.S. will need $625 billion to update water infrastructure.
The funding allotment prioritized states according to need, something that the . The environmental organization saying the states that most needed funds to replace lead service lines were getting shortchanged.
鈥淓PA鈥檚 changes will ensure a fairer and more equitable distribution of funding dollars to replace the nation鈥檚 millions of lead pipes,鈥� said Cyndi Roper, one of the authors of last year鈥檚 analysis. 鈥淚t鈥檚 good news for communities with the highest need that will now have access to more funding to get lead pipes out of the ground.鈥�
The EPA banned new lead service lines 鈥� the pipes that carry water from water mains into people鈥檚 homes 鈥� in 1986 in an effort to combat lead poisoning.
that, even at low levels, can harm children鈥檚 developing brains. Exposure to lead through water accounts for 20% of a child鈥檚 overall exposure, on average. For fetuses and formula-fed infants, leaded water is the No. 1 source of exposure.
President Joe Biden鈥檚 administration has pledged to remove the country鈥檚 lead service lines. But .
The EPA鈥檚 new estimates are projections based on a survey that water utilities filled out in 2021. But not every utility was required to fill out the survey. And some that did respond reported not knowing what their service lines are made of.
The EPA estimated Missouri has 202,112 lead service lines while the NRDC estimated in 2021 that the state had more than 330,000.
Water utilities treat their water to be non-corrosive so that lead won鈥檛 leach from the service line into people鈥檚 drinking water.
But a change in the water chemistry or construction that shakes up a pipe can cause it to start leaching the toxin into drinking water.
That鈥檚 what happened in Flint, Michigan, the most prominent case of lead-contaminated water in recent years.
But the issue isn鈥檛 unique to that high-profile situation. A pediatrician who helped uncover the Flint water crisis said it wasn鈥檛 the first, worst or last.
Something similar happened in Trenton, Missouri, where the . Trenton, like many other water utilities, doesn鈥檛 know where its lead service lines are.
This story was originally published by the
