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WASHINGTON (CN) — The Biden administration on Tuesday announced $5.8 billion for projects to expand access to clean drinking water, replace lead pipes, improve wastewater infrastructure and remove chemical contamination in every state and territory.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced the funding in remarks in Pittsburgh.
Regan said the money will support removal of more than 2,600 lead service lines in the Pittsburgh area.
“Investing in our water is investing in America,” Regan said. “These investments present a historic opportunity to change the game for so many communities struggling to access clean water across the country.”
Harris said the investments will create jobs and are essential to boosting public health.
“Every person should have the right and the ability to have access to clean water. It should not matter where you live or how much money you earn or how much money you’ve got in your back pocket,” she said. “It is an infrastructure matter, but it is also a public health matter and one of the essential functions of government is to concern itself with the public health.”
About half of the money will be distributed as grants or forgivable loans.
“Over 2 million people in America live without running water, tens of millions more lack access to safe and reliable drinking water and sanitation, and over 9 million homes, daycares and businesses receive their water through a toxic lead pipe,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet. “Due to decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment, lack of access to clean water disproportionately affects low-income and underserved communities.”
Harris wrote in a news release: “With this investment, we are continuing our urgent work to remove every lead pipe in the country and ensure that every American has access to safe and reliable drinking water.”
The money comes from the EPA’s Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. About $3.2 billion is earmarked for projects directly affecting drinking water while $2.6 billion supports clean water and stormwater infrastructure.
One of the biggest disbursements is for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which received $1 billion. It will restore 11 highly contaminated sites in the Great Lakes, including in the Milwaukee Estuary in Wisconsin and Cuyahoga River in Ohio. The lakes help provide drinking water for 20 million people.
Small communities are also getting big investments, such as Ridgway, Colorado. Roughly 50,000 people near the town rely on a single water treatment plant, but a $50 million grant will allow officials to construct an additional plant and extend service to other communities.
Representative Summer Lee, a Democrat representing western Pennsylvania in Congress, said 37 schools in her district have lead contamination in their water.
“Generations of folks in communities like mine have grown up in and are now raising children in zip codes that have water funneled through lead pipes next to rivers and streams too polluted to swim in. That’s why earlier this year, we secured $84.5 million to remove lead water lines, and are continuing to fight for environmental justice” Lee said in a news release. “[This money] will mean less kids getting sick and more families having the security of knowing their environment isn’t posing an imminent threat to their health.”
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