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Brown: More must be done to help fund lead testing
AUSTINTOWN
The federal government must do more to help fund testing of blood lead levels in children, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, told reporters after a closed-door meeting with local public-health and lead-remediation officials.
The presence of elevated lead levels “in a child’s blood stunts that child’s intellectual and physical growth, and that’s just something we can’t do to this next generation,” the senator said after the 45-minute briefing ended at the Mahoning County Health Department on Westchester Drive.
“Too many kids have had that problem for too many years,” he added.
Lead-paint remediation needs to be performed in homes of children with high blood lead levels, and officials must “hope we do those early enough to make sure those children are protected,” he said.
The meeting came amid the ongoing lead emergency in the Sebring water supply system.
The meeting followed a report by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency that 758 of 795 water samples taken from homes in the Sebring water-supply system since Jan. 21 are below the federal limit of 15 parts per billion of lead.
The U.S. and Ohio EPAs are working with Sebring officials to fine-tune the local water chemistry to reduce leaching of lead from homeowners’ piping into their water.
Brown said the U.S. Department of Agriculture has emergency funding he hopes can be used for replacement of lead pipes in Sebring.
“We got some significant money at the end of the year” in the federal “hardest-hit” fund, the senator said, adding he’s hopeful that substantial money from that fund can be steered to Ohio and Mahoning Valley communities.
Brown said he advised Sebring Mayor J. Michael Pinkerton “to be vigilant about” the operation of the village’s water-treatment plant, which regulates water chemistry in the distribution system.
Pinkerton, Carol Rimedio-Righetti, chairwoman of the county commissioners, and Patricia Sweeney, county health commissioner, attended the briefing.
“The intent of the meeting was information-sharing,” concerning the lead exposure problem and funding sources to address it, Sweeney said.
Public-health officials are “not screening all of the children who should be screened for elevated blood lead,” she said.
“You don’t want to wait until a child is already poisoned” before doing lead remediation in housing and schools, she added.
“We should be making certain that those are lead-free or lead-safe,” Sweeney said.
After reporters sat on a hallway bench outside the closed-door conference room waiting for the meeting to end, Brown said, “It was really a briefing. It was not to keep you guys out, as much as it was just a briefing that I could hear what’s going on and tell them what kinds of federal programs” are available to address lead hazards.
Brown has drafted legislation that would require the U.S. EPA to automatically notify the public of elevated lead levels in their water if state and federal officials fail to do so within 15 days.
The measure also would reduce the time period for communities to produce a lead-remediation plan from 18 months to six months and require a plan to give residents access to safe drinking water in the interim.
That measure would require the U.S. EPA to make annual state water-quality reports available online in one user-friendly place.
Meanwhile, House Bill 4470, the Safe Drinking Water Act Improved Compliance Awareness Act, passed the U.S. House of Representatives this week by a 416-2 vote.
The bill, introduced by U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, strengthens requirements that the U.S. EPA notify the public when lead concentrations in drinking water exceed the federal limit.
It also requires the U.S. EPA to create a strategic plan for improved information flow between water utilities, the states, the U.S. EPA and affected customers.