President Donald Trump’s EPA head is slamming U.S. Sen. Ed Markey for asking for more federal funding to replace lead pipes in Massachusetts, arguing that the state has yet to spend any of the over $155 million it has already received.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is scorching the Massachusetts Democrat after Markey and the rest of the Bay State delegation requested the agency release funding for Fiscal Year 2025, claiming the feds are dragging their feet on the state’s $99.1 million allotment.
“More confirmation Massachusetts doesn’t send their brightest to the U.S. Senate,” Zeldin said in a social media post last week, in response to the delegation’s request. “Anyone want to guess how much Massachusetts has spent of the $155+ MILLION in lead pipe replacement funding that it has received from the EPA since the start of Fiscal Year 2023? ZERO! NOTHING! ZILCH!”
The request from the Bay State’s all-Democrat delegation comes after Gov. Maura Healey expressed concern over the funding delay in October. Healey said her administration paused a program that distributes the federal money to communities to replace lead pipes.
“These funds are critical to efforts in Massachusetts and around the country to protect public health,” Markey wrote in the letter, “advance our shared goal of removing all lead service lines for drinking water, and provide certainty for communities worried about their water infrastructure investments.”
“The EPA needs to release this funding now,” Markey added.
State officials say Massachusetts has provided over $102 million to approximately 160 communities and public water systems to identify and replace lead service lines since 2022.
Markey highlighted how states have been ordered to replace all water service lines containing lead by 2037, following a rule that the EPA instituted under the Biden administration in October 2024.
In the Biden-era Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Congress provided $15 billion in dedicated lead pipe replacement funding, allocated at $3 billion annually from FY 2022 to 2026. Those funds, Markey said, “ensure that states and communities have predictable, multi-year resources to plan and carry out this work.”
“If Ed Malarkey wants the EPA to release any more funding to Massachusetts for lead pipe replacement,” Zeldin stated in his social media post, “he will have to tell his state to submit a plan to us ASAP on how it is going to spend what it has received previously and is still sitting on. The Trump EPA isn’t messing around when it comes to TOTAL ACCOUNTABILITY of precious U.S. taxpayer dollars.”
The Massachusetts delegation has requested that Zeldin respond to its letter by Dec. 4, with a “timeline identifying when these (Fiscal Year ’25) allotments will be distributed.”
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