MAHA clean – The Trump administration is promoting multibillion-dollar clean drinking water funding under the MAHA banner, including $1 billion for PFAS and $2.9 billion for lead pipe replacement. But the money was originally promised under the Biden-era Infrastructure Inv
The promise is bold enough to fit on a campaign slogan: clean drinking water, rebranded under “Make America Healthy Again.” But for people living with the slow, invisible threat of contaminated water, the real story is timing—and whether the federal dollars keep coming.
Last month. the Environmental Protection Agency announced a $1 billion commitment to address drinking water contaminated by PFAS. a class of synthetic compounds commonly referred to as “forever chemicals.” Two days later. it announced $2.9 billion to help track down and replace lead pipes. Lead can leach into drinking water and is described as a potent neurotoxin that can cause irreversible cognitive. cardiovascular. and reproductive harm.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said. in a statement. that the “Trump EPA is committed to Make America Healthy Again by ensuring clean air. land. and water — and by taking on PFAS.” In a separate statement. EPA Assistant Administrator Jess Kramer said the “Trump EPA is committed to tackling lead exposure” and that the funds “will help protect current and future generations across America by accelerating local efforts to find and replace toxic lead pipes.”.
Those announcements land against a different backdrop: the funds were already promised before Trump took office. Congress passed the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021—the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA—during the Biden administration. The law promised more than $50 billion over five years to revamp the nation’s water infrastructure. described as the largest investment of its kind since the passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act. Billions of dollars for lead pipe removal and PFAS contamination were tucked into that law and scheduled to run out this year.
Approximately $15 billion of those IIJA funds were set aside specifically for removing lead service lines. which deliver drinking water to homes and businesses. Over the past five years. the EPA has been distributing these funds based on each state’s share of lead lines. The nearly $2.9 billion announced last month is the fifth and final of the annual disbursements required under the IIJA. Another $5 billion was set aside for PFAS cleanup.
This year, though, the lead timeline has been more complicated than the clean-water messaging suggests. Funding for lead pipe removal fell short of what Congress originally pledged. Republican lawmakers repurposed $125 million from this year’s appropriation for wildfire prevention. The Trump administration initially delayed releasing the $2.9 billion allocated for 2025. The EPA released the money only after pressure from Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi and six other Illinois lawmakers. who alleged that the funds were being withheld from Democrat-led states.
Even as that immediate delay was resolved, longer-term uncertainty hangs over utilities and the communities they serve. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the EPA’s budget in half in 2027. including a 90 percent reduction in long-standing funding for lead pipe replacement. Federal rules require most water utilities to remove all lead pipes across the country by 2037. Cuts to funding could jeopardize utilities’ ability to meet those targets.
Scott Berry, a senior advisor on policy and external affairs with the nonprofit US Water Alliance, said the cuts are happening while states are trying to clean up lead pipes.
“As of now. there are no plans to increase the funding or even maintain IIJA levels. despite the fact that there is a massive need for investment. ” Berry said. He added that deferring water infrastructure spending could ultimately cost homeowners more, potentially increasing utility bills by an additional $1,000.
The EPA press office. in a statement to Grist. said the agency has taken “significant actions” to protect American families and children and that it “is following the law and disbursing funds appropriated by Congress.” The agency did not respond to questions about projected funding for drinking water infrastructure.
The scale of the problem is stark. Nationwide, the EPA estimates there are approximately 4 million lead service lines buried across the country that are still in use. Illinois leads the nation, with about 1.5 million lead pipes. More than 400. 000 of those lead service lines are in Chicago. a legacy of building codes that required lead connections up until 1986. Because of that, Illinois received about 10 percent of the federal dollars—the largest allocation among all 50 states.
Megan Vidis, spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Water Management, said in a statement that “[we] will work hard to secure our fair share, but there is no determination yet about how much Chicago will receive.”
Due to the funding reductions approved by lawmakers this year, Illinois will receive approximately $15 million less than originally expected.
Chakena Sims. a senior policy advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council. tied the funding dispute to the broader public health goal. “If the federal government is serious about getting the lead out and modernizing the nation’s aging water infrastructure. then it must sustain bipartisan infrastructure law investments and be committed to strengthening — not scaling back. ” she said.
The arrangement is being sold as a new push under MAHA. But for lead and PFAS cleanup, the central question for water systems is whether the money advertised now is the money that will keep arriving later.
Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
PFAS lead pipes drinking water EPA IIJA Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act MAHA Lee Zeldin Jess Kramer Raja Krishnamoorthi Illinois Chicago water infrastructure