State Rep. Ryan Clancy:
What we see is, I think, 62% of lead poisoning cases in children are from Milwaukee throughout the whole state. You know, the state has roughly 150,000 lead laterals. It's got another 200 and some thousand likely pipes that were using lead, either facade or something else. We know that there's no safe level of lead, and we have to put forward the money to get rid of all of those. There have been fits and starts. I know that the city was able to get a $30 million grant and target the places where there's the most kids and the highest lead levels. That's a good start, but that can't be the end of our efforts. So I'm grateful that there's some money in the state budget for now, right? Evers' recommended budget, but even that's not enough. We're looking at just over $300 million in the governor's recommended budget. The actual cost to get rid of all those lead laterals is between two and three times that. So we're estimating somewhere, you know, between $600 million and $1 billion. We should be starting there in the budget. We should be putting in the effort to get rid of that lead in lead laterals once and for all, so we can focus on these other areas too.