Florida, with the most lead pipes in the U.S., gets $376M for drinking water infrastructure
Editor’s note: This story is available as a result of a content partnership between WFTV and the Orlando Business Journal.
Florida will receive over $376 million in fiscal 2023 for drinking water upgrades, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week.
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Almost $255 million of that federal allotment is intended to replace lead pipes throughout the state. About half of that funding was sourced from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, also called the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The law gave Florida more subsidy dollars for pipe replacement than any other state in the wake of an updated survey formula.
The EPA determined in the survey that Florida has 1.16 million lead pipes — more than any other state and about 13% of the entire country’s total. The Associated Press reported that the figure surprised the National Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit that had previously estimated only 200,000 lead pipes to exist here. Lead pipes are most commonly found in homes built before 1986.
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