TOLEDO, Ohio — Toledo's water distribution commissioner says meeting President Joe Biden's deadline that all lead pipes in the country be replaced in 10 years in light of the Flint, Mich., water crisis is no small task for the city.
"It is a heavy lift. It is a lot of work to remove all these lead pipes, both public and private-side. But it is important. I think we should put some sort of timeline, but this is very aggressive," commissioner Todd Saums said. "We have 39,000 lead services connections at the city [-side]. It's roughly, we estimate, a billion-dollar project."
The city's website states that the public utilities department has already been working for years to remove lead pipes. Saums said that funding and labor are two major factors involved in accomplishing a goal like that by a deadline.
"We have a very limited labor force to do the work. At most, we get two contractors to bid on this. We get about one or two service lines done a day, that doesn't add up to 10 years," he said. "We would need a number of contractors bidding on this. We would need additional services internally to help out."
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, up to 9 million U.S. homes still have water serviced through lead pipes. So, the EPA announced $2.6 billion in drinking water infrastructure funding and $35 million in grant funding that will be made available.
But Saums said that is still not enough.
"We've replaced several thousand both in-house and with our contractors. We're aggressive at it, in our opinion. We expect to have every private [-side] lead removed by the end of the year. So, we're happy about that," he said.
