EPIC submits public comment on Lead and Copper Rule Improvements

The Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) submitted public comments to the US Environmental Protection Agency on February 5, 2024 related to the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI). Please see the link below to read our full comments.

In the period since the first Lead and Copper Rule was published in 1991 until now, the country simply has not made substantive progress to replace the nation’s estimated 9.2 million or more lead service lines. Up until now, we lacked: 1) the funding, 2) the momentum, and 3) a clear regulatory mandate. Today, with the LCRI, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and its $15 billion for lead service line replacement, and other funding, initiatives, and momentum advanced by the Biden-Harris Administration, we have the potential of all three, giving us an unprecedented opportunity to replace 100 percent of lead pipes once and for all. This is an all-hands-on-deck effort, the likes of which we have not seen in the water sector before. As an organization focused on speed, with an affinity for new technologies and innovation, EPIC believes that all levels of government need to embrace and incentivize efficiencies in all aspects of the lead service line replacement process, and in ways that we have not even yet identified or done before, to ensure the funding goes further and the replacement efforts go faster. 

We simply cannot wait decades while new generations of children and other vulnerable residents of this country, disproportionately located in BIPOC and lower income communities, continue to be poisoned by lead in drinking water while the solution is readily available. EPIC is poised to see the goal of replacing lead pipes a reality, and we hope to see the LCRI promulgated by October 2024 as a critical step forward.