Tighter regulations and an influx of federal money in recent years have helped communities across the U.S. initiate efforts to clean up lead contamination in soil, drinking water, and older homes. But Congress and the Trump administration have partially rolled back those rules and resources, potentially making it more challenging for cash-strapped cities and towns to undertake sweeping lead remediation programs.
That’s the case in New Orleans, where an investigation by Verite News found high lead levels in about half of the playgrounds on city property and found detectable levels of the toxic metal in most homes that tested their drinking water in a voluntary program.
No level of lead exposure is safe, according to federal environmental officials, but undertaking a comprehensive cleanup can be financially prohibitive. New Orleans is facing a $220 million budget deficit that has led to city employee furloughs and layoffs.
Congress allocated $15 billion over five years to lead pipe replacement under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a Biden-era measure set to expire at the end of this year. In 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency also tightened the standards for lead-contaminated soil for the first time in 30 years and mandated that water systems replace all lead service lines by late 2037.
But a spending package passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in January redirected $125 million of that lead remediation money to wildfire prevention. And since October, the EPA has partially rolled back protections against soil contamination, raising the federal hazard level in urban areas and the threshold for removing contaminated soil.
Tom Neltner, the national director of the nonprofit advocacy group Unleaded Kids, said it was the first time an administration had loosened the limits on lead in soil.
“ We’ve seen the Trump administration say positive things about its commitment to lead but then take actions that undermine that,” Neltner said.
But, he added, progress is still being made in some communities.
EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said the changes made under the Trump administration have reduced confusion and uncertainty that could hamper cleanup efforts.
“The Trump EPA’s record on protecting Americans — especially American children — from lead is unmatched,” Hirsch said in an emailed statement. “In just the last year, the Trump EPA backed up its commitment to reducing lead exposure in children with BILLIONS of dollars and historic action.”
She cited a November EPA announcement of $3 billion available to pay for water pipe replacement. That money is from the 2021 infrastructure law passed during the Biden administration.
Verite News spoke with people in Michigan, Indiana, and Rhode Island to learn how they addressed their lead pollution, with the aim of finding options that could be applied in New Orleans and other cities.
“ We don’t need to do research on lead anymore,” said Tulane University professor Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist who researches the toxic metal and its sources. “What we need are policies to get the lead out of the environment.”
Benton Harbor, Michigan: Lead Pipes Begone
Benton Harbor, a predominantly Black beach town of about 9,000 people on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan, spent three years out of compliance with federal drinking water standards. The concentration of lead in the water remained dangerously high until residents and organizations petitioned the EPA in 2021, drawing responses from state and federal officials.
“Nobody should be drinking lead in their water for this long,” said Elin Betanzo, an engineer who provided the petitioning residents with technical support.
That year, federal officials issued an enforcement order for the Michigan city to bring its water supply into compliance, and the state required Benton Harbor to replace all its lead pipes within 18 months. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, committed to securing funding in the state budget for the $35 million effort, which included bottled water distribution and paying outstanding water bills for low-income residents. The state, alongside the city, allocated money from its general fund, secured regional water loans, and cobbled together grants from several federal programs to cover the total.
By the end of 2023, city officials had completed the project. Now it’s one of 21 municipalities in Michigan that have replaced all their lead pipes. Benton Harbor had more than 4,500 pipes to replace.
The Trump administration has said it would defend the Biden-era mandate for lead pipe replacement by 2037 against a lawsuit challenging it.
Betanzo recommended that utilities in other cities reduce barriers to line replacement to increase efficiency, as Benton Harbor’s water system did.
City officials saved time after assuming most pipes would be lead. They decided to go street by street, digging up, inspecting, and replacing nearly every pipe. If the pipe wasn’t lead, it wasn’t replaced, but nearly all were, Betanzo said.
Concentrating the mass replacement in one zone at a time made the contracts more cost-effective, Betanzo added. Contractors bid on zones in the city, and multiple contractors worked in different neighborhoods simultaneously. For transparency, progress was published on a public database.
The city also passed a law requiring lead lines be replaced, including those on customers’ side of the water meter. All residents had to allow the contractors onto their property or face disconnection. The residents didn’t pay for the line replacements.
“ The health benefits of lead service line replacement are greatest the sooner you get it done,” Betanzo noted, referencing a 2023 study she co-authored. “If you do it wrong, you can absolutely increase exposure to lead through a lead service line replacement.”
Completion of full pipe replacement is rare in the U.S., because of the cost, poor service line tracking, the time it takes, and the prioritization of other issues. In New Orleans, the process could require up to $1 billion of investment over 10 years, according to the city’s Sewerage and Water Board.
Indianapolis: Safe Dirt for Kids
It’s not just lead pipes that are problematic. In 2024, a study published in the academic journal GeoHealth estimated that nearly a quarter of homes in the U.S. have unsafe levels of lead in the soil on their properties.
To that end, Indianapolis has taken some actions that other cities can learn from, said Gabriel Filippelli, a professor at the Indiana University-Indianapolis School of Science who led the study and has researched the risk of lead exposure through soil for years.
The Indy Parks & Recreation department partnered with Filippelli’s team to test a dozen parks relatively close to the contaminated site of a shuttered lead smelter.
Out of all the parks tested, Filippelli’s team found only one hot spot, beneath an old bench from which lead-based paint had flaked off into the surrounding soil.
The parks department followed Filippelli’s suggestion to replace the bench and add concrete and a thick layer of mulch and plants on the ground, so kids wouldn’t be able to play directly in the contaminated dirt.
“It was a relatively low-cost intervention,” he said, estimating it cost a few thousand dollars. The ground wasn’t excavated, and new dirt wasn’t brought in. “If you deal with it by dilution and by capping, remove the source, you’re solving the problem for today and probably many, many years to come.”
The contaminated dirt may need to be removed in some cases and replaced with clean soil, such as after severe, widespread pollution from industrial sources. But Filippelli said such extensive remediation can be impractical and too expensive for cities to undertake on their own.
Where full remediation is cost-prohibitive, Filippelli said, there are more creative solutions, like landscaping, covering the area with new dirt, or mulching. These methods won’t eliminate the lead entirely, but they will significantly reduce exposure risk.
“You can eliminate the hazard at a fraction of the cost,” he said.
Cities could also look to New York City’s free Clean Soil Bank program, which places uncontaminated soil left over from construction projects in neighborhood-level banks for volunteers to distribute, he said.
Rhode Island: Stopping Lead at the Source
New England, home to some of the nation’s oldest homes, has led the U.S. in mitigating one of the largest ongoing sources of lead contamination: paint.
In 2023, the state legislature in Rhode Island, where most of the homes were built before lead paint was banned in 1978, passed a package of laws strengthening the state’s ability to enforce tenant protections.
Prior to 2023, the state had long required most landlords to have their property inspected to ensure it met “lead safe” guidelines, said DeeAnn Guo, a community organizer for the Childhood Lead Action Project. Although no level of lead is considered safe, replacing windows and doors that have lead paint, painting over all interior and exterior walls, and mitigating contaminated soil significantly reduce the risk of exposure.
But for years “there was no incentive to do it,” Guo said, “aside from it being the right thing to do.”
Now, landlords can be fined if they don’t have an active lead certificate on file for homes built before 1978, and the property has to be inspected every two years to remain in compliance. Before the new law, less than 15% of rentals were certified. In late 2025, that had increased to 40%, Guo said.
The state has also seen a steady decline in the levels of lead found in children’s blood.
Guo said it helps that the state has federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to subsidize its LeadSafe housing program. If a homeowner or landlord owns an old house, they can apply for the state to send an inspector. If lead is found, the state will then send a certified contractor to address the problem at little to no cost to the property owner.
Rhode Island prioritizes low-income households and homes with pregnant women or children under 6 years old, because of the heightened health risk. It can also help pay to remediate homes if a child living there has elevated levels of lead in their blood.
States and communities looking to start a successful lead paint abatement program using HUD money should combine strong enforcement, public education, and offers of subsidies, Guo said. It also helps to include community members in the planning process, she said.
Under the Trump administration, however, it might become harder for more communities like New Orleans to receive money for a “lead safe” program. Last year, HUD asked Congress to eliminate new funding for its lead hazards program, stating it would be restored in 2027. But advocates for more lead protections argue that once funding is lost, it is unlikely to be approved again.
“It shows the White House’s hypocrisy, where they talk about lead as being important and then propose eliminating the funds that are essential to cleaning up affordable housing,” said Neltner, the Unleaded Kids director. “This administration talks about the importance of children and then seems to be careless about children’s brains.”
This article was produced in collaboration with Verite News. The four-month investigation was supported by a Kozik Environmental Justice Reporting grant funded by the National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute. It was also produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship fund and Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism.
Great Job Halle Parker, Verite News & the Team @ Public Health Archives – KFF Health News for sharing this story.
