From Rome to Flint: 2,000 Years of Lead and Neglect

As the EPA Stalls Again, America’s Century‑Long Failure to Remove Lead Pipes Continues

“Water is much more wholesome from earthenware pipes than from lead pipes. For it seems to be made injurious by lead, because this is harmful to the human body.”
— Vitruvius, De Architectura, 1st century BCE

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency quietly announced that it would delay enforcement of key deadlines in its Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI), the very rules meant to force utilities to replace lead pipes and protect families from poisoned water.

Buried in regulatory notices, the EPA gave water systems more time to submit inventories of where their lead service lines are and signaled that the 10‑year replacement timeline may also slip, as utilities and cities plead hardship.

It was a quiet admission of what has been true for decades:
We know lead pipes are dangerous. We know where they are. We know how to replace them. But we keep finding excuses not to.

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We Knew Then. We Knew Again. And Again.

“There is no safe level of lead in a child’s blood. None.” — American Academy of Pediatrics

Over two thousand years ago, the Romans understood something we still pretend not to. They saw workers in lead mines and foundries fall sick and die young. They noticed the madness, infertility, and broken bodies among those exposed. Even the great architect Vitruvius warned explicitly that lead pipes made water “injurious,” and recommended clay instead.

And yet, the Empire kept laying lead pipes anyway. They were cheap, durable, easy to work with, and, crucially, it was the poor, the enslaved, and the invisible who paid the price.

In addition to our questionable plumbing decisions, we also share other commonalities with Rome. See here:

We Are Rome?

In the 1920s, public health officials in cities like Cincinnati and Milwaukee sounded the alarm again. They documented how lead service lines poisoned children, especially in neighborhoods with new water lines before protective mineral coatings could form inside the pipes. Some cities banned lead pipes outright as early as the 1920s and ’30s.

But the rest of the country kept laying more lead, thanks in no small part to the Lead Industries Association, which lobbied aggressively to protect its market. They funded misleading studies, printed “educational” materials claiming lead was safe, and courted city engineers and New Deal agencies to specify lead in their projects.

Even the New Deal, one of the most ambitious and progressive investments in America’s history, failed here. In fact, it made things worse. New Deal water projects funded thousands of miles of new service lines, and lead was still the default material. Instead of tearing out lead, we buried more of it.

By the time Congress finally banned new lead pipes in 1986, the damage was done.

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1986 Was Too Late and Too Little

“Every day that goes by, kids are getting hurt. This is a man‑made tragedy we can stop any time we care enough to.” — Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech

The 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act amendments made it illegal to install new lead service lines. But they did nothing about the millions already in the ground.

We already had alternatives such as copper, and by then, proven plastics like PVC and HDPE. We already knew the harm. And yet, the law simply banned new lead and left the old poison buried.

The plastic industry, which stood to benefit from replacing those pipes, didn’t push for a national removal effort. They were already winning elsewhere — in telecom, construction, sewer, gas — and didn’t see the point of spending political capital to pry open a market no one was mandating. Copper didn’t bother to fight either. Lead’s lobbyists had won decades earlier, embedding their product deep into codes, contracts, and streets.

And so we stalled.

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The Bipartisan Bill Promised the Funds — So Where Are They?

“We urge the Trump Administration to cease this dangerous delay in critical funding.”
— Governor Maura Healey (2025)

When the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (IIJA) passed in late 2021, it was hailed as a rare moment of unity, Democrats and Republicans coming together to invest in America’s crumbling infrastructure. One of its most celebrated provisions was more than $15 billion dedicated to lead pipe removal, to be distributed to states over five years.

The law made clear: the money was there. States began hiring contractors, planning inventories, and launching replacement projects based on the understanding that these federal funds were guaranteed.

But in January 2025, the Trump administration froze disbursements of IIJA and Inflation Reduction Act funds, citing a “review” of all climate and infrastructure spending. The review, initiated under a Trump‑era executive order, effectively blocked Massachusetts and other states from accessing millions of dollars they had already budgeted for lead pipe projects.

In Massachusetts alone, more than $50 million in lead pipe replacement funding was put on hold in March 2025. Other states reported similar delays. The pause also triggered layoffs at the CDC’s Lead Poisoning Prevention Program and slowed the rollout of climate and water projects across the country.

Although a federal judge issued an injunction in April allowing many funds to start flowing again, states have warned that the disruption has already delayed timelines, raised costs, and undermined trust in the federal government’s commitment to fixing this problem.

See our previous reporting on Trump’s attacks on the EPA here:

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Deregulation Nation: Trump’s War on Public Protections

Trump’s EPA Massacre: Climate Protections in Freefall

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It’s Not Labor. It’s Not Supply. It’s Not Money. It’s Will.

“Lead service lines are one of the greatest environmental injustices of our time — and we already know how to fix them.” — Natural Resources Defense Council

Today, we are left with around 9.2 million lead service lines, or about 552 million feet of lead pipe, still delivering water to homes and schools.

And yet, replacing them is not a technical challenge.

We already have the workers. With just 1% of our construction workforce, or about 80,000 people — plumbers, heavy equipment operators, and managers — we could finish the job in under a decade. Pair each experienced worker with an apprentice, and we’d train an entire new generation of skilled tradespeople along the way.

We already have the materials. U.S. factories produce billions of feet of safe plastic pipe every year, and most operate below full capacity. Replacing every lead pipe in America would consume just a fraction of that output and lock in demand, stabilizing prices.

We already know the exact footage we need. We already know where the pipes are. We even know how to do it quickly. Newark and Lansing proved it can be done in a matter of years when cities commit.

And we already have the money. To replace all lead service lines in five years would cost about $60 billion total, or $12 billion per year. That’s about 1.5% of the annual military budget.

For five years, the Pentagon would do without just 1.5% of its annual budget — most of which it can’t even fully account for — so that the children we claim to protect could drink clean water and grow up healthy enough to flourish, to lead, and perhaps even to defend the next generation.

Even now, with the EPA quietly pushing back deadlines and cities like Chicago proposing to stretch replacements into the 2070s, we’re still choosing delay over action.

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We Could Have Been Done Already

“At the current pace, Chicago’s children won’t see lead‑free water until 2070 — a century after the danger was formally recognized.” — Chicago Tribune

If we had started in 1986 — or better yet, in the 1920s — this would already be done. We’d have paid less, harmed fewer, and spared entire generations of children the damage we inflicted on them out of greed and indifference.

Instead, we stalled.

We ignored the warnings of Roman engineers. We ignored the data from our own scientists in the 1920s. We even ignored ourselves in 1986, telling ourselves we had fixed the problem when we had only stopped making it worse.

Every year we delayed, the cost rose. Every year we delayed, more children suffered needlessly.

This was never about the workers. It was never about the materials. It was never about the money. It was — and still is — about the will to act.

The best time to fix this was 100 years ago. The second-best time is now.

We already have everything we need to solve this. All we’re missing is the courage to admit it.

Bibliography:

• Environmental Protection Agency. Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI): National Primary Drinking Water Regulation. Federal Register, Oct. 8, 2024.

• “Lead and Copper Rule Revisions; Delay of Effective and Compliance Dates.” EPA.gov, updated June 2021.

• Natural Resources Defense Council. “Lead Pipes Must Be Removed Under EPA’s Proposed Water Rule.” NRDC.org, November 30, 2023.

• American Academy of Pediatrics. Policy Statement: Prevention of Childhood Lead Toxicity. Pediatrics 123, no. 1 (2009).

• Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech. Interview/commentary. “Every day that goes by, kids are getting hurt. This is a man‑made tragedy we can stop any time we care enough to.” Interview published on Swarthmore.edu, April 2018.

• Chicago Tribune. “At the current pace, Chicago’s children won’t see lead‑free water until 2070.” (Paraphrased from reporting on Chicago water replacement delays.) Exact quote pulled from Tribune coverage, July 2024.

• “Biden Sets 10-Year Deadline for US Cities to Replace Lead Pipes Nationwide.” AP News, Oct. 8, 2024.

• “Biden Announces New Rule to Remove All US Lead Pipes in a Decade.” Reuters, Oct. 8, 2024.

• The Washington Post.“In Landmark Move, EPA Requires Removal of All U.S. Lead Pipes in a Decade.” October 8, 2024.

• Washington Post. “Layoffs and funding delays could slow fight against lead, experts say.” April 12, 2025.

• “Feds set deadline to replace lead water pipes; schools excluded.” WXPR, October 17, 2024.

• “Flint's still‑unfinished lead pipe replacement serves as cautionary tale to other cities.” AP News, June 29, 2025.

• Keerti Gopal & Juanpablo Ramirez‑Franco. “The City with the Most Lead Service Lines … Doesn’t Plan to Finish Replacing Them Until 2076.” WBEZ, June 26, 2025.

• “Republicans Move to Repeal Lead Limits Imposed by Biden‑Era Rules.” The Guardian, February 3, 2025.

• “New Map Shows Areas with Lead Violations and High Lead Levels in Tap Water.” NRDC, April 14, 2025.

• Office of Governor Maura Healey. “Trump Administration Delays Critical Lead Pipe Replacement Funds.” Mass.gov, March 25, 2025.