Illinois shortchanged on lead money

Illinois has extra lead water-service strains than some other state, however the method used to allocate federal lead removing cash fails to take that into consideration.

Why it issues: Lead strains can leach brain-damaging poisonous substances into ingesting water, and Chicago’s downside alone will value billions to repair.

Final 12 months, Illinois acquired simply $106 million of the $15 billion earmarked for lead removing in President Joe Biden’s huge infrastructure invoice.

Driving the information: A gaggle of fifty bipartisan members of Congress, together with a number of Illinois representatives, despatched a letter to EPA officers urging them to replace the 2015 method they use to allocate lead removing cash.

• Particularly, they need that $15 billion allotted in response to the variety of lead strains in every state.

By the numbers: Beneath the present method, the seven states with 52% of the nation’s lead service strains would obtain simply 18% of the lead removing funding, in response to a survey cited within the congressional letter.

• One other evaluation by a water security engineering agency calculated that Utah would get $1,229 per service line whereas Illinois would get $157.

What they’re saying: We should “be certain that allocation is equitable and states with the best want, like Illinois, obtain the required funds to guard our communities from the risks of lead publicity,” U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider stated in a press release.

The opposite facet: EPA officers instructed Axios they anticipate to make use of new lead line stock “to tell funding allotments for FY 2023 and past.”

• They did not, nevertheless, say whether or not all that information can be in place in time for the subsequent batch of funds.