Benton Harbor Mayor Marcus Muhammad was in Washington, D.C. on Friday attending the Replacing Lead Pipes summit.
During the summit, Vice President Kamala Harris said the Biden Administration has a plan to replace every lead pipe in the country in the next ten years. She also spoke about some of the underlying factors contributing to the health crisis surrounding lead pipes.
“Access to clean water is often a function of one’s socioeconomic condition, geographic location, race and ethnicity,” Harris said. “It does not take much investigation or knowledge to know that … those communities that have led surface lines and pipes are exactly those communities that are socioeconomically low income, and are invariably communities of color [and] poor communities.”
Mayor Muhammad took to social media throughout the day to post highlights of his day, including a handshake with President Biden.
“I would like to thank President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for launching the Replace the Lead Pipes Initiative within the next decade,” Muhammad said. “It was an honor to represent the City of Benton Harbor at the White House Complex. President Biden is proud of the great work that has taken place in Benton Harbor, Michigan.”
Muhammad touted the fact that Benton Harbor has replaced 99.4% of its lead lines, and said the city is “a model of how [lead pipe replacement] is done in real time.”
Throughout the summit, Harris emphasized the environmental and social justice aspects of replacing lead lines.
“Usually, [lead pipes] will exist in the same areas where we are looking at food deserts, where we are looking at underfunded schools, where we are looking at inadequate or difficult access to public transportation,” she said. “I think about it in the context of being a child of parents who were active in the civil rights movement, who fought every day and shouted and marched for justice, which was about equality and equity and fairness and freedoms – including the freedom to live and thrive and be healthy and enjoy one’s childhood, not to mention the rest of their life.”
Harris also gave a shout out to mayors.
“I love mayors,” she said. “The mayors are there on the ground. … Mayors don’t have the luxury of being theoretical about very practical issues. Knowing their community, knowing where their resources are, can do the work of everything we do here [in Washington] hit the streets in a competent and efficient and effective way.”
The administration announced $15 billion to remove lead pipes as part of the $1 trillion infrastructure package Biden signed in 2021.
