BUFFALO, NY – Buffalo will be one of the first cities in the nation to deploy cutting-edge machine learning to solve a century-old problem: the location of about 40,000 drinking water pipes made of toxic lead, most of them likely be found at low levels. -income communities of color. Today local community groups, mapping experts and elected officials held a kickoff event to announce the development of an interactive online map that will allow Buffalo residents to learn the known or potential composition of home water pipes theirs.
Buffalo, like most communities in the country, does not have an accurate map of where lead water pipes are located. The community organizations anchoring the map work in Buffalo—Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Open Buffalo, and Citizen Action of New York—are working in coalition with national environmental organizations WE ACTION for Environmental Justice and NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), with technical support provided by BlueConduit, a water analytics company.
“Buffalo residents deserve safe drinking water, which is why we must work quickly to rid every lead water pipe in the city, especially in neighborhoods of color that are likely to bear a disproportionate burden of pollution. By sharing information about where lead pipes are located in a transparent and accessible way, Buffalo’s lead pipe map will help residents take the necessary steps to protect themselves and their families from lead exposure by including the use of water filters,” he said Stephanie Simeon, Executive Director of The heart of the city’s neighborhoods and resident of Buffalo.
Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown said, “Today, we are excited to welcome WE ACT, NRDC and BlueConduit to join us as partners, along with Buffalo’s frontline organizations: Heart of the City, Open Buffalo and Citizen Action, as we engage residents to better identify lead service. lines at home. My administration continues to invest millions through our Replace Old Lead Lines (ROLL) program, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to protect children from lead poisoning.”
“Flint opened our eyes to the devastating human costs of lead-contaminated water. I expect Buffalo’s map will become a model for other environmental justice communities in New York State who want to take the lead from their tap water to protect the well-being of children and families,” said Rozmari Rivera e New York Citizen Action.
“As a mother of two young children, I am constantly concerned about their safety and well-being. We cannot continue to steal our children’s future by being slow to act. It is imperative to educate our community and empower residents. The lead crisis is something we have the power to mitigate, but we must act collaboratively and quickly,” said Franchelle CH Parker, executive director of Open Buffalo and resident of Buffalo.
Buffalo’s water service line map will be informed by maps created for communities in Flint, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. These maps allow residents to find out the actual pipe material in their homes, find information available about pipe inspections at their address, link to the city’s inspection permit form and access resources for steps they can take. to protect themselves and families if their homes have lead water lines.
“Safe drinking water is a basic human right. Lead in drinking water poses a serious risk to the people of Buffalo and communities across the country,” said Eric Schwartz, co-founder of BlueConduit and associate professor of marketing at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. “BlueConduit is proud to provide the data science, analytics and mapping technologies behind this effort through our software platform. Working collaboratively with this strong partnership—the Buffalo community, Buffalo Water, WE ACT, NRDC and other project partners—gives us the reach and power to take the lead in Buffalo efficiently and equitably, prioritizing those most vulnerable and at risk.
Buffalo is the first city to join a new multi-city public-private partnership to identify and replace lead water pipes, work made possible by a Google.org grant. This is a historic time for critical domestic infrastructure projects. The Biden administration secured a $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure package, allocating $15 billion to remove lead pipes from communities nationwide, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will distribute about $50 billion in funding to clean water infrastructure – the largest single US investment in drinking water and wastewater systems. Two more cities will join this pilot project at a future date.
NOTE: To talk to Oluwole A. McFoy, PE, General Manager of the Buffalo Sewerage Authorityplease contact LaToya Cunningham [email protected], (716) 851-4664.
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Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Inc. (HOCN) is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to creating affordable housing programs for Buffalo neighborhoods, helping to improve and strengthen the community. HOCN has worked alongside residents, neighborhood organizations, financial institutions and real estate professionals to make Buffalo’s core communities a better place to live. While their original housing programs worked to increase homeownership opportunities, their most recent program has made an effort to stabilize homeownership through the repair of squatter housing as well as ensuring that tenants have access to increase in safe and affordable housing options. Visit us online at www.hocn.org and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
IN ACTION for Environmental Justice is a membership-based organization in Northern Manhattan whose mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low-income residents participate meaningfully in policymaking and sound and fair health and environmental protection practices. WE ACT has offices in New York and Washington, DC Visit us at weact.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international non-profit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and activists online. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.
BlueConduit is a water analytics company that has developed cutting-edge, predictive machine learning software to locate key service lines. The company’s solutions enable utilities to focus their resources on excavation where it matters most and accelerate the removal of this significant health concern, saving millions of dollars in avoided excavation. Since 2016, BlueConduit has worked with more than 50 municipalities and has inventoried nearly 1 million service lines, serving more than 2 million people. For more information, follow us on Twitter @blueconduitai or on LinkedIn.
