A group of 30 Senate Democrats led by Maryland’s Ben Cardin introduced comprehensive legislation last week in response to the Flint water crisis aimed at improving water infrastructure, increasing regulatory oversight of lead screening and water quality monitoring, and helping homeowners remove lead pipes. The bill, which supporters say would cost $70 billion over ten years, compiles various Flint-inspired bills offered earlier this year into a single legislative package.
Introduced as S. 2821 and titled the “Testing, Removal and Updated Evaluations of Lead Everywhere in America for Dramatic Enhancements that Restore Safety to Homes, Infrastructure and Pipes Act,” or the “True LEADership Act” for short, the bill would dramatically increase water and wastewater infrastructure funding, by:
- Reauthorizing the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) at $21.17 billion over five years, and the Clean Water SRF at $34.93 billion over the same period;
- Making permanent the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) pilot program and providing it with $1.36 billion annually in mandatory funding over the next 13 years;
- Authorizing a $300 million, five year grant program to help communities and low-income homeowners replace lead service lines; and
- Removing the state volume cap on private activity bonds that finance water and wastewater infrastructure projects.
The bill would also impose several new regulations through the Safe Drinking Water Act, such as:
- Directing EPA to finalize changes to the Lead and Copper Rule within 180 days;
- Granting individuals the right to commence a civil action, or petition EPA to do the same, when it is believed that drinking water may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health;
- Establishing a voluntary, grant-funded program to help schools carry out tests for lead in drinking water;
- Requiring EPA to notify the public of lead action level exceedances if the local utility fails to do so in a timely manner;
- Permanently applying “Buy American” iron and steel rules to the Drinking Water SRF program.
Other parts of the legislation would offer tax credits to low- and middle-income homeowners to help pay for the removal of fixtures, pipes, and other lead hazards from the home, and reform the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Healthy Homes program to expand access to federal lead abatement assistance.
Additional provisions included in the bill can be reviewed in a detailed summary of the legislation that is available on Senator Cardin’s website. No Republicans have signed on in support of the bill, and the high spending levels and new layers of regulation proposed in the legislation give the package an extremely remote chance of advancing through the Senate this year.