Where are America’s lead pipes?

Despite the danger posed by contaminated water, many states have no idea

From The Economist. Full story here.

But the federal government did not fully ban the installation of new lead pipes until 1986. Even then it allowed existing pipes to remain in the ground. The trouble is, no one is sure where they all are.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are between 6m and 10m lead service lines in America but does not publish a breakdown of where. In 2018 it requested, for the first time, that all states report by 2022 on the quantity of lead pipes still in use. Efforts by another organisation to collect this data show how difficult this is. Earlier this year the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental charity, asked states to provide estimates for their lead pipes. Just ten states and the District of Columbia were able to provide full estimates. Another 23 states said they did not track the number of lead pipes. Three were in the middle of surveys. The rest failed to respond or submitted incomplete data. (Using supplementary data from a 2016 survey by the American Water Works Association, an industry body, the NRDC estimates that there are between 9.7m and 12.8m lead pipes in America serving as many as 22m people.)