this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
597 points (99.5% liked)

News

23404 readers
4690 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A decade after the Flint, Michigan, water crisis raised alarms about the continuing dangers of lead in tap water, President Joe Biden is setting a 10-year deadline for cities across the nation to replace their lead pipes, finalizing an aggressive approach aimed at ensuring that drinking water is safe for all Americans.

Biden is expected to announce the final Environmental Protection Agency rule Tuesday in the swing state of Wisconsin during the final month of a tight presidential campaign. The announcement highlights an issue — safe drinking water — that Kamala Harris has prioritized as vice president and during her presidential campaign. The new rule supplants a looser standard set by former President Donald Trump’s administration that did not include a universal requirement to replace lead pipes.

Biden and Harris believe it’s “a moral imperative” to ensure that everyone has access to clean drinking water, EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters Monday. “We know that over 9 million legacy lead pipes continue to deliver water to homes across our country. But the science has been clear for decades: There is no safe level of lead in our drinking water.’'

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] grue 2 points 1 month ago

Okay but what you need to understand is that the EPA's allowable level of lead for municipal water supplies is 15 parts per billion (PPB) (which is very low), and the standard doesn't change based on what materials were used for the pipes. Getting below that threshold is not only achievable but expected even with lead pipes, if you treat the water properly. Flint's problem was that it didn't, because the Governor kicked out the people who knew what the fuck they were doing!


As for your 20/20 hindsight, it's just that: hindsight. A lot of these pipes date back to the early 1900s or earlier, when not only had plastic not yet been invented, even copper pipe barely existed because they hadn't figured out how to efficiently manufacture it water-tight yet (source). That means the alternatives to lead pipes were really shitty, such as terracotta or wood, and even if they did manage to use early copper pipes or some other metal, guess what: the joints would all be soldered with lead anyway. Moreover, this was also back when they were so ignorant about the cumulative effects of exposure to lead that they still thought it was a good idea to put it in things like gasoline and paint, so why would they have concerned themselves with the relatively small risk from using it in plumbing?

If Flint were a sunbelt city built mostly after 1950, then sure, using lead for the pipes would've been inexcusable. But Flint was already in decline by then, so most of it is older than that!