EPA Announces $3.65 Million Grant to Rural Community Assistance Partnership to Reduce Lead in Drinking Water - Water Quality Products

EPA Press Release

 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the projects selected to person implicit $30 cardinal successful assistance backing nether the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act, including $3.65 cardinal to the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP). This assistance funding, and further backing done the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, volition assistance marque accelerated advancement connected the extremity of addressing pb and removing pb pipes crossed the country.

“A pillar of our enactment astatine EPA is ensuring that each idiosyncratic successful each assemblage has harmless drinking water,” said EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox. “The subject connected pb is settled – determination is nary harmless level of exposure. This assistance backing volition assistance trim vulnerability to pb successful drinking h2o and should beryllium utilized to enactment underserved communities that are astir astatine hazard for exposure.”

“Region 7 is simply a agrarian portion and this assistance to the Rural Community Assistance Partnership is an important mode EPA is investing successful reducing puerility pb vulnerability successful Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska,” said EPA Region 7 Administrator Meg McCollister.

“RCAP plays a cardinal relation successful fostering the technical, managerial, and fiscal capableness for our nation’s tiny h2o systems,” said Olga Morales-Pate, CEO of RCAP. “We are pleased to pb and coordinate this task to assistance tiny h2o systems, agrarian schools, and kid attraction centers flooded systemic lead-related challenges, and we convey EPA for investing successful our agrarian infrastructure and communities.”

Other selected projects are:

• National Priority Area 1 – Reduction of Lead Exposure successful the Nation’s Drinking Water Systems done Infrastructure and Treatment Improvements
• City of Trenton, New Jersey - $5,530,000
• City of Fall River, Maine - $10,000,000
• Detroit, Michigan, Water and Sewerage Dept. - $5,000,000
• National Priority Area 2 – Reduction of Children’s Exposure to Lead successful Drinking Water successful Schools and Child Care Facilities
• Hawaii Dept. of Health - $2,000,000
• School District of Philadelphia - $4,999,658
• These selected projects volition assistance disadvantaged communities and schools with removing sources of pb successful drinking water. These projects volition enactment to further the goals of the Biden-Harris administration’s Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan, successful summation to the Justice40 Initiative, which seeks to present 40% of benefits from definite national investments to disadvantaged communities successful need.

Learn more astir this assistance and EPA’s WIIN assistance programs.

Background

Lead poses superior wellness risks to some children and adults – children are particularly vulnerable. Low-income and different historically underserved communities typically acquisition precocious levels of pb successful their drinking h2o due to the fact that they are disproportionately served by pb work lines. The six caller projects selected crossed the state volition person assistance backing nether the WIIN Act done the Reducing Lead successful Drinking Water assistance program.

To date, implicit 2,400 pb work enactment replacements person been completed arsenic a effect of enactment from that assistance program.

In summation to this announcement of backing availability, the Reducing Lead successful Drinking Water WIIN assistance programme besides awarded implicit $1 cardinal successful assistance awards toward tribal pb simplification projects coordinated done interagency agreements betwixt Indian Health Services and EPA. Additionally, EPA is moving with states, tribes, and territories to grant further assistance backing done EPA’s 2 different drinking h2o assistance programs established by WIIN – the Voluntary Lead Testing successful Schools and Child Care assistance programme and the Small, Underserved and Disadvantaged Communities (SUDC) Grant.