70

The Environmental Protection Agency is at risk of misallocating nearly $1 billion in lead pipe replacement funding to the wrong states because it didn’t verify inaccurate data provided by Texas and Florida, an agency watchdog announced.

At issue is a first-of-its-kind EPA survey that asked local officials to estimate the number of lead pipes in their state. Some states with long industrial legacies like Illinois and Michigan have far more than others. The bipartisan infrastructure law provided $15 billion to find and replace lead pipes. The survey was to ensure states with more pipes got more money.

But the EPA didn’t verify what states told them and there were glaring problems with the numbers provided by Texas and Florida, according to the inspector general. For example, a single data entry error by Houston caused the EPA to allocate nearly $120 million more to Texas than it probably should have in fiscal year 2023, the report said. When Houston told Texas officials about the mistake, the state didn’t inform the EPA, the report said.

top 1 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 10 points 3 days ago

Sounds like Texas and Florida should receive considerably less than all the other states, and/or be banned from self-reporting ever again.

Texas and Florida. What's the ROI?

this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
70 points (98.6% liked)

News

23252 readers
3748 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS