Co-Sponsorship Memo Details

As you know, our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. We cannot travel our districts without observing roads and bridges that are in desperate need of repair. What’s often overlooked is our critical water and wastewater infrastructure. The American Society for Civil Engineers recently gave a grade of D and D- for Pennsylvania’s water and wastewater systems. That is simply unacceptable.

In an effort to curb this problem, a bi-partisan group of legislators wrote language into this year’s Fiscal Code allowing municipal authorities and municipal governments to replace homeowner’s water and sewer laterals when there is a public health concern such as lead. Unfortunately, left out of that was Pennsylvania’s regulated water and wastewater utilities who serve much of my district.

To that end, I intend to introduce legislation allowing regulated water and wastewater utilities to replace  water laterals in communities that have still have lead distribution pipe coming into their homes and sewer laterals that pose environmental hazards.   This will allow these utilities to proactively be part of the solution to a growing public health issue.