We need investment in physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure to quickly and equitably replace lead pipes.
In 2021 President Biden and Vice President Harris made a commitment to replace all lead and service lines in the next ten years. Every person in America deserves access to clean water, air, and a liveable home. As we continue to embark on our lead free journey innovation, equity, and efficiency are critical components.
The Water Data Prize competition was created to facilitate this much needed innovation by encouraging designers, communication enthusiasts, technologists, community advocates, engineers, students and entrepreneurs to imagine new and cost-effective ways to address information and data needs created by the new Lead and Copper regulations. In March, we announced the winners of the 2021 Water Data Prize and through the process of reviewing all the applications we found many other themes and important points that went above and beyond our four categories.
Today, we released our recommendations for water utilities and regulators to quickly and equitably replace lead pipes. This report showcases innovative solutions to achieve lead-free water work from community partners, technology companies, communication specialists and more following our 2021 Water Data Prize. This guide follows the four main categories from the prize (equity, communications inventory, and mapping), but we also find that data and digital infrastructure play an important role with respect to solving this public health crisis, especially in disadvantaged communities. For example:
Water systems need to systematically collect and store information about where lead pipes are and report this information to the state - robust databases and digital infrastructure is required to do this in a near real-time, efficient manner that enables easy tracking towards progress at the local, state and national level.
An accessible, interactive web map is required for both the community and the water utility to understand who is impacted by lead pipes and implement a replacement strategy - this necessitates easy-to-use web tools and a team to maintain it.
Water systems will be making choices on a daily basis about where to do work within their community and grant makers will also be targeting funds to specific regions - decision support tools that center equity throughout the process, incorporate water quality violations data and demographics are crucial to inform prioritization and timeliness of lead pipe replacement plans.
We’ll break these topics down over the next few weeks - stay tuned for more! In the meantime, we invite you to read about the results and recommendations from the Water Data Prize and reach out if you have questions or recommendations about how we can quickly and equitably replace lead pipes.