Congress Wants to Gut Protections Against Lead. We’ll Fight Back.

Gary Palmer, a Republican congressman from Alabama, introduced a resolution to eliminate new protections against lead in drinking water — including a requirement to replace most lead service lines in the country within the next 10 years. Lead pipes poison the water of millions of people in the United States.

A week later, President Trump ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to block hundreds of millions in federal funding to states for lead service line replacement, defying Congress and putting public health at risk.

Why it matters: There is no safe level of lead exposure for anyone, and especially for children, which is why Earthjustice has worked for years alongside our partners and clients to strengthen lead protections. Our work successfully challenged dangerously flawed rules on lead, paving the way for much stronger regulations in 2024. We won’t back down or cede any ground on the progress we’ve made against known hazards like lead.

Earthjustice uses the power of the law to ensure that all people have safe workplaces and neighborhoods, have access to safe drinking water and food, and live in homes that are free of hazardous chemicals. We are able to do this work because of supporters like you.

How radical actions from Congress and the White House put us all at risk.

• Regulatory Roadblocks: Lawmakers are using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn major environmental safeguards and stop agencies from creating similar protections in the future. This action could make it extremely difficult to implement future protections against lead in drinking water.
• Neglecting urgent action needed: If protections against lead in drinking water are eliminated, by the EPA’s own estimates, only 5% of lead service lines would be replaced over the next 35 years.
• Health Risks: Blocking stronger lead regulations allows millions of Americans to remain exposed to toxic lead in drinking water, posing severe health risks, especially to children, who are most vulnerable to lead-related developmental harm. Communities drinking lead contaminated water should not have to wait decades for help.
• Economic Costs: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided states with an unprecedented and sorely needed $15 billion dollar investment in lead service line removal funding. In a brazen act of disregard for laws already passed by Congress, the Trump administration unilaterally decided to halt that funding to states.

How does lead contamination impact our health?

• Lead is a suspected carcinogen and neurotoxin that can cause irreversible developmental harm in children, learning disabilities, and impaired hearing.
• In adults, lead exposure may cause memory loss and reproductive impairments, and it is also a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease mortality.
• The widespread public exposure to lead — which is entirely preventable — costs the U.S. economy over $50 billion every year in lost economic productivity resulting from reduced cognitive potential.

How is Earthjustice fighting lead contamination?

• For years, Earthjustice has pushed to update basic health and safety protections for lead contamination, using our deep bench of legal expertise to protect communities, especially those who are most vulnerable to lead contamination.
• In 2019, Earthjustice sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on behalf of community advocacy and environmental organizations for failing to establish protective lead hazard standards for older housing and child-occupied facilities like schools and daycares. In 2021, we sued the EPA again for its failure to propose adequate measures for replacing lead pipes in homes, schools, and childcare facilities.
• In response to successful lawsuits by Earthjustice and others, as well as grassroots pressure from frontline communities, the EPA unveiled landmark rules in late 2024 that requires the replacement of most lead pipes nationwide within a decade and tighten its standards for lead in dust from deteriorating lead paint found in many homes, schools, and daycares.

We’ve come too far on strengthening lead protections to back down. Communities drinking contaminated water because of lead pipes should not have to wait decades for help because President Trump and his allies in Congress are carrying out a radical, scorched-earth deregulatory crusade.

Take action.