President Joe Biden announced Thursday $3 billion toward identifying and replacing the nation’s unsafe lead pipes, a long-sought move to improve public health and clean drinking water that will be paid for by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Biden unveiled the new funding in North Carolina, a battleground state Democrats have lost to Donald Trump in the past two presidential elections but are feeling more bullish toward due to an abortion measure on the state’s ballot this November.
…
The Environmental Protection Agency will invest $3 billion in the lead pipe effort annually through 2026, Administrator Michael Regan told reporters. He said that nearly 50% of the funding will go to disadvantaged communities – and a fact sheet from the Biden administration noted that “lead exposure disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income families.”
This is huge…
I don’t get a chance to be happy with Biden often, but this is one of the rare times.
Lead poisoning doesn’t just hurt people’s health, it makes the stupid and belligerent. Like, those are the actual effects of it.
There’s a reason the benefits of banning leaded gas takes decades, it’s not helping those who already have lead poisoning, it’s just waiting for a new generation to grow up without it.
This is like one of those “best time to plant a tree” things.
The benefits are really far away, but doing it is a huge investment in our future as a society.
It’s reassuring to know society overall will be more sane when I’m old.
Sadly, this is barely enough to scratch the surface. We need a lot more money put into this, and it’s not like the presidents before Biden didn’t know about it. They just didn’t even do this much. It’s disgraceful.
Kind of true, but some lead pipes just aren’t an immediate issue. Like asbestos in a building that isn’t disturbed, it doesn’t hurt anyone until it starts to come loose.
Getting the worst of it solved is a good step.
The issue with not dealing with problems immediately, is that people have a tendency to push them down the line over and over until it’s not just immediate, it’s an emergency over a decade ago. Flint still doesn’t have clean water. This should have been a good first step Obama did, like he promised he was going to.
Flint actually does have clean water by most metrics and independent measurements, but public trust is reasonably deeply, deeply shaken.
This, and I don’t mean this as a bad thing, isn’t actually a thing Biden started. It’s a massive disbursal of funds allocated by the infrastructure bill to a program started in 1996 for upgrading water infrastructure and specifically removing lead pipes.
So this is something great to do, and we should keep doing more of it (there’s $12 billion more waiting for future rounds), and we can be slightly happy that we’re not complete fuck ups since we actually started nearly 30 years ago.
We shouldn’t have to live in a world where we need to advertise that the people entrusted to be basically competent at managing our public works are doing their jobs, but here we are, and we should probably advertise this stuff better.
It’s in conjunction with state and local funding as well. Your local municipality might be abke to aquire $4 million to replace the main lines through local bonds, while getting $2 million from the state and another $10 million from this federal program.
Your mood is a disgrace.
I’m sorry, sir. I’ll lick the boot harder, I promise!
Biden: Adds on to the amount he’s already given to replace lead pipes; more than any other president has done
The Uncanny Observer: Yeah but it should have been done 20 years ago so I’m mad 😠
Edit: this brings the total up to 9 billion. Still not enough for everything, but how much has every other president gave? Be a little happy
You’re right. I need to really celebrate those incremental improvements. I mean, not like we’re gonna get anything more out of democrats. Just whatever they need to still be able to say “we’re not as bad as the other dude”.
Unironically, yes. Big jumps don’t happen without violent revolution and that rarely works out well. Progress happens by baby steps. If you’re waiting for everything to get better all at once, you will be angry the rest of your life.
Explain to me how the United States was created
George Washington did not politely ask for independence.
He and others murdered people for it. A lot of people. And then he won. And now here we all are.
Rarely
Dosage matters.
It takes a very low dosage to see effects, and it stacks.
So, you’re right. But it just feels like you were trying to disagree with me, when you were reinforcing my point that even a little is harmful.
Again this arrogant stupidity.
Define “low” and explain how would you make that something objective for this your sentence to not look awfully stupid.
My friend, the recognized “safe” level of lead is literally no lead. Any more than literally 0ppm is above safe lead levels.
Just because it isn’t considered lead poisoning, doesn’t mean it’s safe.
Do some research before you pop off about stuff you don’t understand:
You will find no evidence that lead at any level is safe. In fact, previous research which suggested that lower levels were fine are being refuted by more recent studies, that show quite the opposite.
That’s not what I’m talking about and this sentence too reaches the “Soviet lecture for kolkhozniks” level of cringe.
By 0 do you mean “under 10^(-10)”, or “under 10^(-13)”, or what?
I know what lead is.
You’re being pointlessly semantic and making no actual argument here.
Didn’t have an opportunity to make it clearer due to opponent’s smartassing tone, so: the argument was that it does matter how much probability there is of lead getting into your water.
Since, as even people under this post explain, it happens differently with different water composition, whether there is vibration, whether some sharp item floats through the pipe etc.
So a lead pipe doesn’t necessarily poison all water passing through it. Just sometimes does that.
Same as a punctured cast iron pipe doesn’t leak always, only when the pressure is right, when some coating of various nature over the puncture gets dissolved or damaged by vibration, etc.
A single molecule of lead in a human body is too much. Does that answer your question?
And I’m aware the chances of a specific person consuming lead are slim for most pipes, the problem is there are so many lead pipes throughout the country, that I’d be willing to bet money there are a number of people drinking lead contaminated water right now.
It’s like the lottery, just because the chances are exceedingly small that you will win, doesn’t change the fact that it’s almost guaranteed someone will win.
OK.
Ooh, nice. Coming in hot with the ethnic slur against Ukrainians, and then continuing on with some delightfully obnoxious pedantry.You should stop while you’re behind.It is a different word, and I misread it; as was pointed out, it’s a Russian cultural anecdote/idiom that non Russians would not necessarily understand. My apologies for starting a kerfluffle with my misunderstanding.
You shouldn’t write anything on subjects requiring knowledge of Russian without that knowledge.
Колхозник means, naturally, someone living and working in колхоз .
And “лекция для колхозников” is a reference to a well-known (in ex-USSR) anecdote.
And you are an idiot.
So I was going to apologize for my misinterpretation and express some appreciation for giving me some new knowledge, but then that last sentence happened.