EPA’s final Lead and Copper Rule Improvements cut down deferred timelines for cities with the highest number of lead service lines
By Erica Galante-Johnson
On October 8th, the Biden-Harris Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the final Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI), launching a ten-year timeline for water systems to replace all of their lead service lines (LSLs). EPIC applauds this landmark achievement, and are committed to this national effort to get the lead out and the ten-year timeline set forth by the federal regulations.
The final rule tightened the proposed deferral mechanisms enabling disproportionately impacted water systems to extend their replacement deadlines. These changes significantly reduced the deferred deadlines in America’s most LSL-burdened cities, further strengthening the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to rid the country of the majority of these toxic lead pipes in a ten-year timeline.
EPA dropped deferrals based on total numbers of lead lines
What changed?
The deferral mechanisms were simplified so that only systems with a high proportion of LSLs are eligible to extend, regardless of the total number of LSLs they have. This means that systems with over 100,000 LSLs are no longer eligible to defer their deadlines simply by capping the number of replacements to 10,000 per year under the final rule. The deferral mechanism was further simplified by setting the deferral threshold at 39 replacements per 1,000 service connections per year instead of a per-household basis. EPIC believes this change will enable better estimates of the number of LSLs that must be replaced since ascertaining the number of households served by a water system can be quite difficult, especially when dealing with a large number of multi-family homes which can significantly skew these proportions. Despite this simplification, the total number of systems eligible for deferrals did not change significantly according to the EPA.
Why does it matter?
Removing the possibility of limiting replacements at 10,000 per year drastically reduced timelines for the country’s top three lead-burdened cities: Chicago, Cleveland, New York City (NYC). The proposed deferral would have extended their replacement deadlines to 14 years for NYC, 27 years for Cleveland, and up to 42 years for Chicago, giving the Windy City until 2067 to complete replacement including the 3-year period before the rule goes into effect. Based on our early analysis with the information now available, the final rule cuts these deferred timelines almost in half for Chicago and Cleveland while setting NYC on track to complete replacement in 10 years.
Though these tighter deferrals are certainly an improvement, the news is not all good. Under the final rule, St. Louis, Missouri which has an estimated 63,000 LSL could still push back their replacement deadline to 2041, similar to Cleveland.
Figure 1. The final Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI) set tighter deferrals for the cities with the highest number of LSLs in the country. Years within the 10-year timeline set by the LCRI are displayed in blue while years extending beyond this timeline are shown in green, with each calendar icon representing one year. Years that have been crossed out, represent how much the deferred timelines were shortened by the more stringent final rule.
Full Speed A-Lead
Tighter deferrals for lead service line replacement constitute a big win for some of the country’s most vulnerable populations by reducing their risk of exposure to lead-contaminated drinking water. Despite these tighter deferred timelines Chicago, the country’s most heavily-burdened city, will still have almost twice as long to complete LSL replacements as the Biden-Harris administration’s 10-year goal. Though we acknowledge particular logistic and funding challenges that overburdened systems face, EPIC expects annual replacement rates to accelerate over time as systems gain experience and adopt more cost-efficient practices.
We hope the momentum generated by this rule will continue to grow and accelerate the pace at which communities work to get the lead out of our drinking water once and for all.
Methodology
We calculated and compared the deferred timelines under the proposed and final Lead and Copper Rule Improvements for the country’s top three cities with the highest number of lead service lines: Chicago, Cleveland, and New York.
To do so, we obtained EPA’s most recent data on estimated LSLs and total service connections from the updated 7th Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment and followed EPA’s methodology to calculate deferred deadlines as described int the Technical Support Document for the Proposed LCRI.
Proposed rule deadline calculations
These three cities were eligible to defer their deadlines by capping replacements to 10,000 replacements per year under the proposed rule. Therefore we estimated the initial deadline by dividing the number of estimated LSLs by 10,000 replacements per year and adding an additional three years to account for the effective date, kicking off this timeline.
Final rule deadline calculations
Under the final rule, only systems with a replacement rate exceeding 39 replacements per 1,000 service connections (0.039) would be eligible for deferral. Therefore, we calculated the final deferral deadlines for these cities following a similar methodology EPA had originally proposed for the per-household ratio, but basing calculations on the ratio of LSLs per connections instead. Likewise, we added three more years to these calculated deadlines to account for when the rule (and therefore the timeline) would go into effect.
Note that if New York City were to follow this replacement rate it would reduce its timeline to four years, which we do not believe is a likely scenario. Therefore we assigned NYC the standard 10-year timeline for the final deadline.
| City | LSLs | Total connections | LSLs per connections | Initial deadline | Final deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago | 387,095 | 522,571 | 0.741 | 42 | 22 |
| Cleveland | 235,442 | 463,598 | 0.508 | 27 | 16 |
| New York | 111,616 | 712,290 | 0.157 | 14 | 10 |
Table 1. Estimated deferred timelines for the top three cities with the highest number of LSLs in the country under the proposed (Initial deadline) and final (Final deadline) Lead and Copper Rule Improvements. Note that estimated deadlines account for the three year period before the rule goes into effect.