New Ohio bill would require full replacement of lead water lines

By Nadia Ramlagan, Farah Siddiqi

By Savana Capp / Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi reporting for the Kent State NewsLab-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

Ohio has over 745,000 lead service lines carrying drinking water into homes, schools and other buildings, the third most in the nation. But in 15 years they could all be replaced. The Lead Line Replacement Act would require every publicly owned water system in Ohio to fully replace lead service lines in that time period.

House Bill 307 creates a foundation for identifying and ultimately removing dangerous lead lines that could potentially be harming communities in Ohio, said Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus, one of the bill’s sponsors.

“This is a human good, so if we are addressing water quality, it’s not just impacting that family, it’s impacting the entire community,” Jarrells said.

Jarrells introduced this bill because he said he is a survivor of lead poisoning and knows the effects lead can have on children and families. According to the Centers for Disease Control, lead can harm children’s health by damaging their brain and nervous system, slowing growth and development or causing learning, hearing and speech problems.

Jarrells said he was just a child when he got lead poisoning from paint chips at his grandmother’s house. Despite the difference of lead poisoning from paint chips and water, he said it has the same effect. It caused him to lose his ability to speak clearly. For years, he took speech pathology classes trying to regain what the lead had stolen.

“The truth is if we are not addressing this systemically, children and families are going to get sick unbeknownst to them, because lead poisoning is a very silent killer,” he said. “You won’t know it’s impacting you until it’s too late, until the lead is already in your system.”

Even though lead lines are mostly found in older homes and neighborhoods and lower-income areas, anyone in Ohio can be affected by this, said Annalisa Rocca, Central Ohio regional director at the Ohio Environmental Council and Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund.

“You never know if your grandma has a line, if your aunt has a line, if your best friend has a line,” Rocca said. “So truly everyone can be impacted whether you directly have a lead service line at your home or not.”

After the Sebring, Ohio, water crisis in 2016, the OEC began to increase their advocacy for safe and clean water. Rocca started working on HB 307 two years ago.

She grew up drinking water straight from the tap. But she said going to college in Michigan during the Flint water completely changed her perspective.

“I had just never thought twice about it coming into my tap and just drinking my water, but you can see how quickly this can devastate a community once they realize there’s that influx of lead in their water,” she said.

The biggest pushback facing the bill is its $5 billion price tag. However, Jarrells and Rocca both said the improved water quality and return on investment make it worth it.

In a study commissioned by the OEC, completed by Scioto Analysis, every dollar spent on lead service line removal in Ohio would contribute to a public health and economic benefit of $32 to $45. The health benefits include decreased rates of infant mortality, ADHD and depression, as well as increased IQ’s. Water waste would also be decreased.

Rocca said the uncertainty around federal funds and cuts to H2Ohio make funding the replacement more challenging. Without government funding, the costs could fall on water utility companies and homeowners to make those replacements. However, Jarrells said the bill has bipartisan support, and he thinks some of the $700 million allocated to a bipartisan infrastructure bill could go toward replacing the lines over the next five years.

There are no guidelines in the bill specifying how to pay for the lead line replacements.. That would be left up to the Ohio EPA, as well as local municipalities and governments. Rocca said some areas such as Columbus have already started to focus on their underserved communities.

The US EPA has proposed a mandate that all lead lines come out in the next 10 years. Even so, Rocca said it’s important to make this an Ohio law.

“Especially with changing administrations at the federal level, you never know when that’s going to change, and that rule might get pulled back,” Rocca said.

Jarrells hopes this bill will make people more aware of the possible consequences of leaving lead lines in Ohio.

“I use my personal story as a vehicle to talk about the realities that not addressing lead in chips and lead in water literally robs young people of their futures,” he said.

This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.