In the coming weeks, the City of Houston will be contacting residents whose houses might be at risk of having lead pipes, according to a Houston Public Works spokesperson.
As part of a Biden-Harris Administration Environmental Protection Agency mandate to eliminate lead pipes in the U.S. over the next 10 years, Houston Public Works will soon present a plan to identify any older homes with lead pipes.
“This is all part of the President’s announcement with the lead, copper rural revision that they came out with last week,” Public Works representative Erin Jones said. “It’s been in the works for several years now. We knew this was coming and we’ve been working on a program to kind of discover what service lines have lead and which ones don’t.”
So far, the city has not been able to identify any service lines with lead but homes built before 1988 could have lead plumbing, Jones said.
“We’ve actually had a survey open since 2021 to help identify if any of our customers have lead pipes,” she said. “The EPA banned lead pipes in 1988 so any homes built after 1988 are very unlikely to have lead pipes in Houston. Some of those older homes in Houston could possibly have them.”
The date to mail out the announcements has not yet been decided but it will likely happen very soon, Jones said.
“We’re going to announce all of our big plans for this next week and we’ll be sending out notification letters to customers,” she said. “The EPA has said it’s not mandatory that utilities replace the customer’s lead lines but it’s highly encouraged and it just depends on the size of the utility [district] as well.”
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that Houston would receive $7.5 million in funding to remove lead hazards from homes and HUD properties.
Although these funds are not directly tied to the public work’s investigation into lead pipes, it is part of a broader effort by the Biden-Harris Administration to improve the drinking water quality across America. $2.6 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has also been designated to lead pipe replacement and upgrades.