Philadelphia could start using federal funds to replace lead pipes as soon as this spring, city officials said

Philadelphia’s $500 million in newly allocated federal funding for water infrastructure improvements could begin paying for lead pipe replacement as soon as this spring, potentially removing the hazardous pipes from hundreds of city homes, Philadelphia Water Department officials said.

President Biden announced the investments at a news conference Friday during a visit to the city.

Lead pipes are used in Philadelphia’s water system as service lines, the connectors between homes and the larger water mains, said Heather Murphy, a water quality expert at Temple University’s College of Public Health. (The water mains are primarily iron) Lead service lines, which can be more than 100 years old, can become dangerous when they corrode, releasing lead into water.

It’s unclear exactly how many lead service lines are in the city, but the Philadelphia Water Department estimated in 2017 that about 20,000 properties received water through lead pipes. Most of those are private homes, said Brian Rademaekers, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Water Department.

In Philadelphia, health officials have long known that children living in the poorest neighborhoods are most at-risk for lead poisoning. In many such communities, the majority of residents are Black. About 6% of Philadelphia 3-year-olds were reported to have elevated lead levels in 2021.

Water pipes, though, are not the primary cause of lead poisoning. The city treats its water with orthophosphate, which reduces corrosion and prevents them from releasing lead into the water. The lead that harms children is more likely to come from lead paint or lead dust in homes built before 1978, or even lead in the dirt contaminated by old industrial plants.

Still, Murphy said, the service lines should be removed.

“They’re worth replacing,” Murphy said. “We still don’t know enough, I would say, and they are in the system.”

The funds going to Philadelphia are part of a $15 billion Biden administration initiative to replace all lead pipes in the country in the next decade, the White House reported. Lead pipes are a greater concern in the country’s oldest cities, Biden said during a speech at Belmont Water Treatment Plant in West Philadelphia.

“You would think that we’re the richest most prosperous nation in the world and that safe water would be something that is guaranteed,” Biden said Friday. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case.”

Philadelphia’s funding allocation comes from multiple sources.

A loan from the Environmental Protection Agency includes $19 million to replace 15 miles of aging water mains and an estimated 160 lead service lines at no cost to homeowners, Rademaekers said. The first neighborhoods to see lead pipe removal should be Olney, Rhawnhurst, and Kingsessing neighborhoods, and parts of North Philadelphia.

This is part of a $340 EPA loan which will support years of capital projects, including work on pumping stations and clean water storage projects, Rademaekers said.

“It took years of work negotiating with them to get this set up,” he said.

The city also received $160 million out of a $240 million grant to Pennsylvania last year as part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. About $35 million of that will go toward lead pipe replacement, Rademaekers said, though he wasn’t certain how many homes would be affected.

» READ MORE: Pennsylvania’s children face lead perils everywhere. A new state report offers ideas to protect them.

Exposure to even small amounts of lead can stunt children’s growth and lead to other behavior, vision, and speech problems.

Pennsylvania has the second highest levels of lead exposure among U.S. states, according to Lead-Free Promise Project, a nonpartisan activist group focused on lead paint poisoning in Pennsylvania.

» READ MORE: Lead poisoning in Philly kids has declined, new data show. Families still may need to take safety precautions.

In nine West and North Philadelphia zip codes, including the neighborhoods of Kingsessing, Cobbs Creek, Wynnefield, Brewerytown, West Kensington, Hunting Park, Germantown, Nicetown-Tioga, and Strawberry Mansion, children were twice as likely to have elevated lead levels, compared with the city average, according to data from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

Philadelphia has replaced 2,600 lead service lines with copper pipes since 2017, Rademaekers said.

» READ MORE: With new standards, more children considered at risk from lead in Philadelphia

The work can be complicated, he said, because service lines often don’t belong to the city. The city needs permission from private property owners to replace service lines, and it can be difficult to get access and funding, or even to find where the service lines are located. If the property owner consents, Rademaekers said, the water department replaces the lead pipes at no charge.

“We want to deploy this capital to those who need it the most first, and cities like Philadelphia are ready and primed for these investments,” said Michael Regan, the EPA’s administrator, who joined Biden in his Philadelphia visit.

Staff reporter Frank Kummer contributed to this article.

This story has been corrected to accurately describe the composition of the city’s water mains.