President Biden, in Wilmington, NC, touts efforts to replace lead pipes in water systems

During a Thursday visit to Wilmington, President Joe Biden touted a $3 billion federal program to help water utilities nationwide find and replace lead service lines.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $15 billion to identify and replace lead service lines. The Environmental Protection Agency has distributed those funds in $3 billion segments, with Thursday’s announcement representing the third of those.

North Carolina’s portion of the funds is $76.2 million, which will be disbursed by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. That brings the total amount of lead service line funds North Carolina has received to $250.55 million.

“I’m determined to fix it and we’re finally moving. Until the United States of America, God love us, deals with this, how can we say we’re a leading nation in the world? For God’s sake, we’re better than this,” Biden said.

And while Thursday technically was an announcement of actions taken by the administration, it came against the backdrop of a close presidential race again pitting Biden against the presumptive GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump. Trump was forced to cancel a rally in Wilmington two weeks ago because of severe weather.

There is no safe level of lead in drinking water. Lead is a neurotoxin that can cause babies to be born early or too small; hinder learning in children and stunt their growth; and increase blood pressure and cause kidney problems in adults, according to the EPA.

“No matter whether it’s lead or forever chemicals, this president has demonstrated that he’s using every tool in the toolbox, whether it be resources from Congress or statutory authority form his agencies, to protect the drinking water for every single family in the country,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan, a North Carolina native and former secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, told The News & Observer Thursday.

Biden has said all of the estimated 9 million lead service lines nationwide should be replaced by the early 2030s..

Ali Zaidi, the White House’s national climate adviser, told reporters the Biden administration’s vision of infrastructure is broader than roads, bridges and high-speed rail projects.

“Those are the projects above the ground that captivate our imagination. What’s equally important and perhaps more is us meeting our moral responsibility to our young people: delivering clean air and clean water,” Zaidi said.

The Biden campaign has long planned to target North Carolina, which Trump won by 1.3% in 2020. That’s a narrower margin than the 3.66% by which Trump won the state in the 2016 presidential election.

While Thursday marked Biden’s first visit to Wilmington this campaign season, he and cabinet secretaries have been frequent visitors to North Carolina in recent months. That includes a March 26 visit Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made to Raleigh to tout the administration’s health care plan and an April 10 visit Regan made to Fayetteville to announce the nation’s first-ever drinking water standards for some forever chemicals.

Before flying to Wilmington Thursday, Biden visited Charlotte, where he met with families of law enforcement officers killed and wounded on Monday.

Trump has visited the city at least three times during the 2016 and 2020 campaign seasons, including an official presidential visit in September 2020 to designate Wilmington the nation’s first American World War II Heritage City.

Looking for lead in North Carolina

At first glance, Wilmington seems like a curious choice for an announcement about replacing lead pipes. The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which provides drinking water to much of Wilmington and New Hanover County, has not identified any lead service lines in its system.

The utility has grappled more publicly with the challenge of forever chemicals, most significantly but not entirely GenX compounds coming down the Cape Fear River from Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant.

Still, the Wilmington-area utility has obtained $4.16 million of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to replace 300 service lines that are suspected to have lead “gooseneck” connectors between the public water system and the service line that runs into a home.

That’s one of 96 lead service line projects selected by DEQ. Many of the projects DEQ has identified so far are the initial inventory of finding and confirming there is lead in service lines, rather than replacements.

In Wake County, Fuquay-Varina has received $500,000 to find lead pipes that need to be replaced, while Durham and Orange counties each received $1 million to verify that suspected pipes or connections do contain lead.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.