Paul Tonko: “Lead pipes. The $863 million in the Drinking Water SRF of which I spoke is a lot of money. But when you put it into…”

“Lead pipes. The $863 million in the Drinking Water SRF of which I spoke is a lot of money. But when you put it into context of maybe 10 million lead service lines in the country, when you think of infrastructure that is beyond 100 years old--when I did tours--I have been doing tours in my district of the water systems, and I have found systems as old as 145 years. That is when Rutherford B. Hayes was in the White House. And I saw pipes that were 8-inch in diameter reduced to 4-inch flow because of calcification. I saw pipes removed because of corrosion by the acidity of soils that has taken its toll. You think of new technology, invention, innovation, gauges that can be utilized, liners that can be put in certain pipes for extending the useful life, things that we can be doing that provide for preventative maintenance and speak to public health and public safety. You know, it is a bit of wonderment, isn't it, that we will trade our cell phones every other year, or perhaps every year, because they have got a new product on the shelf; or will trade in our screens, our TV screens, because they are simply not big enough; or the car has got too many miles or we just came to dislike the color, and so we trade in the automobile every three, 4 years. But we are content to live with water pipes for 145 years. It defies human logic. Why do we accept that?…”