Michigan Municipalities Must Get Rid of Lead Service Lines

We all know how important fresh, clean drinking water is. I have heard many different idea's on how much we should drink every day.  I make it a habit to drink about 64 ounces a day. Of course we have heard over the years that our body weight is over 60 percent water, at least that's what I was taught in school, and heard over the years.

So about 3 years ago, Michigan put some strict rules on lead water pipes, requiring every municipal water system to replace its lead service lines a rate of at least 5 percent per year. They wanted to do this till there were zero left according to fox47news.com. Of course we all remember the Flint water crisis which stared in 2014.

Get our free mobile app

Here is the kicker to making Michigan's drinking water safer, the cost.  It would be about $2 billion statewide. WOW, that's a lot of money.

The water lines that the city is now responsible for replacing have historically been owned by the property owners, and the property owner would've been responsible," Whipple said. "The state's actually requiring us to go into private property...by law we have to comply with it, which means it will affect the water and sewer rates for everybody in the city

In order to help us get healthy drinking water the federal government is trying to make grant money available, but most of the financing would likely fall on local utilities. In the city of Mason they say taking out all the lead service lines, and galvanized steel service lines would cost a whopping  $7 million.

In the meantime, I will keep doing what I always do. Buy my drinking water, and continue to filter my water out of the tap.