"Even small communities like Newburgh, N.Y., need major federal funds to protect children from what the president calls ‘a clear and present danger’ "
"NEWBURGH, N.Y. — They scrutinized the paint on the walls, the lacquer on the woodwork and even the dirt that Karisma and Damian DePauw trekked into their home, an apartment in a century-old building along the western bank of the Hudson River.
But officials at the county health department struggled to explain why the couple’s young daughter had a high level of lead in her blood. That’s when her parents suspected the water.
“There’s no other explanation,” said Karisma, who worked as a nursing assistant before giving birth in 2018 — the year this mostly Hispanic and African American city was warned that its water contained unacceptable amounts of the toxic metal.
Lead pipes have long delivered drinking water to older municipalities in the Northeast and Midwest, along with the risk that they could leach lead. The water-contamination debacle in Flint, Mich., one of the nation’s worst public health disasters, highlighted the threat after thousands of children were exposed. Now, half a dozen years later, President Biden has put a sweeping remedy at the center of his plans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and address the legacy of environmental racism in minority and low-income communities."
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