President Joe Biden announced a plan to replace all lead pipes in the country over the next 10 years, pledging an additional $2.6 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency to improve drinking water during a visit to the election battleground state of Wisconsin.
“I’m here today to tell you that I’m finally insisting it get prioritized and insisting it get done,” Biden said Tuesday, casting it as a move that would have far-reaching positive impacts on public health while also being a boon for workers. “It’s good for our economy and it’s good for our jobs.”
As part of the plan, 49% of the funding will go to disadvantaged communities as grants or principal loan forgiveness. The agency will also unveil the availability of $35 million in competitive grants for reducing lead in drinking water.
Biden spoke from Milwaukee, where $30 million to replace lead pipes from his hallmark infrastructure law is accelerating the timeline for completing the task to a decade from 60 years, according to the White House.
He used the visit to Wisconsin, one of the seven swing states that will determine November’s election between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, to hail the Democratic presidential nominee he wants to succeed him in the White House.
Biden said the lead-pipe initiative was “one of the many reasons Kamala and I fought so hard to pass the bipartisan infrastructure law” — a measure he said was intended “not only to modernize our nation’s infrastructure, roads, bridges, ports, airports, transit, electric grids, portable high speed broadband, but also to get rid of the godforsaken lead pipes.”
And he jabbed at Trump — without mentioning him directly — and the Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson.
“There’s some folks who don’t have any problem leaving people behind, like my predecessor in the White House and his allies in Congress, like your senator, Ron Johnson, who voted against it,” Biden said.
“He calls it a radical agenda,” he continued. “I don’t think there’s a damn thing radical about protecting kids from lead poisoning. Protecting women from low birth rates, protecting from brain damage, so much more.”
The administration is highlighting multimillion-dollar investments to finish lead pipe replacements in many other cities within a decade, including Detroit, Pittsburgh, Denver and Akron, Ohio, and St. Paul, Minnesota. In other cities like Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Edgerton, Wisconsin, the replacement of all lead pipes has been completed.
“There has never been more federal funding available to remove lead pipes. And let me just add that investing in our water infrastructure is not only an investment in public health, it’s an investment in local economies,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “For every $1 billion invested in water infrastructure, we create approximately 15,500 jobs.”
Wisconsin is part of the so-called Democratic blue wall of northern states critical to the election’s outcome — battlegrounds where the campaigns are in a pitched fight to win over working-class voters worried about jobs and high prices.
A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll from September found Harris leading Trump by 51% to 48% in Wisconsin among likely voters.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
