Google.org has awarded grants totaling $3 million to BlueConduit Charitable Fund, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and WE ACT for Environmental Justice in support of replacing lead service lines.

According to NRDC, lead can be harmful to human health even at low exposure levels, and in the United States, lead service lines carry drinking water to an estimated nine to twelve million homes, with low-income communities and communities of color bearing a disproportionate burden. Grants will fund the development of BlueConduit's open-source machine learning technologies, which will enable cities and towns of all sizes to quantify and map their inventory of lead service lines and help municipalities estimate the cost of replacing them. In the first half of 2022, initial software will be made available that enables water utilities to create public-facing maps aimed at strengthening public communication and helping communities meet upcoming revisions from the Environmental Protection Agency regarding lead and copper usage.

Funding will help WE ACT provide support to local community groups in three cities to increase outreach and education around service line replacement, and NRDC will assist the project and local partners by providing technical, legal, and policy elements and co-convene the partnership with WE ACT.

"Even though lead poisoning is completely preventable, it remains a deadly threat to many Black communities, with studies showing that Black children living below the poverty line are twice as likely to suffer from lead poisoning as poor white children," said WE ACT co-founder and executive director Peggy Shepard. "We look forward to working with BlueConduit, Google.org, and NRDC on this project to support local organizations in identifying and advocating for the remediation of lead pipe infrastructure that contaminates the drinking water in their local communities."

(Photo credit: Brian Maranan Pineda for NRDC)