(The Center Square) — The feds are sending greater than $119.8 million to fund consuming water upgrades, together with the removing of lead pipes, throughout Georgia.
The federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, sometimes called the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, integrated $6.5 billion for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, established with 1996’s adjustments to the Safe Drinking Water Act.
“EPA’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund enables states to make the critical investments needed to improve drinking water infrastructure,” EPA Region 4 Administrator Daniel Blackman mentioned in an announcement. “This funding … will ensure safe drinking water and enhance public health protections in underserved communities across the Southeast.”
The feds made the state allocations in response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s seventh Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment. The survey, mandated by way of the Safe Drinking Water Act and performed each 4 years, evaluates the country’s public water methods’ infrastructure wishes.
“The ability to drink clean water free of lead and other contaminants should be a human right not a privilege,” U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, mentioned in a statement. “Particularly for our young school children, who are more susceptible to the effects of lead exposure. We know from testing in 2017 that some DeKalb County schools had lead in pipes more than 150 times the EPA’s recommended level.”
This article First seemed in the center square