American Rescue Plan Funding: A Playbook for Efficiently Getting the Lead Out
Summary
Lead is a neurotoxin that continues to harm communities across the country. Though new uses of lead in paint, gasoline, and pipes have been banned for several decades, lead in legacy products and materials remains in communities, posing an ongoing threat to human and economic development. Anywhere from 6 to 10 million residential lead service lines (LSLs), for instance, are still in use nationwide.
Funding included in American Rescue Plan (ARP) grant programs gives cities and states the opportunity to finally eradicate lead contamination in water lines. These steps outlined in this memo (and summarized in the figure below) represent a data- driven approach to rid American communities of the pernicious effects of lead contamination in water systems. This approach builds on research from the University of Michigan and subsequent implementation by BlueConduit in more than 50 cities in the United States and Canada.
We won’t solve the cost-of-living crisis without improving the capacity of state public utility commissions to protect customers, find and implement new solutions to meet rising demand, and realign broken utility incentives.
Public service commissions should require utilities to quantify avoided healthcare costs, reduction in pollution exposure, and improvements in population health alongside traditional metrics.
California just took an important step toward making electric trucks more affordable and easier for businesses to buy.
In 2023 alone, more than 2,300 people died in the United States directly from extreme heat. Expanding access to residential air conditioning could reduce heat-attributable deaths and adult emergency department.