There is outrage among some politicians and activists after the US Congress voted to slash $125m for replacing toxic lead drinking water pipes that are particularly a threat to children.

The move will hit Michigan, Illinois, Texas, New York and other states with the highest levels of lead pipes the hardest. The cut was part of a broader government funding bill and particularly controversial in the context of the fight over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding.

Lead pipe replacement funding was approved with bipartisan support in 2021, but Republican leadership on the interior, environment and related agencies committee that controls appropriations redirected it for wildfire prevention, over the objection of many Democrats.

Many US states have called for more federal funding as millions of people in the US continue drinking dangerous lead-contaminated water. The financial resources were “urgently needed to finish the job”, the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said in a statement to the Guardian. Tlaib’s district in and around Detroit has among the highest levels of lead lines,

“Our work to rapidly replace every lead service line in America is reaching a critical moment, and this is an insult to every one of our communities struggling for access to clean water,” said Tlaib, who is chair of the Get the Lead Out caucus in Congress.

Republican interior committee leadership did not respond to requests for comment.

Lead is considered among the planet’s most toxic substances, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said no level of exposure to it is safe. The agency has found it lowers IQ scores in children, stunts their development and increases blood pressure in adults.

Removing the lines would prevent up to 900,000 infants from having low birth weight, save about 200,000 IQ points in children and avoid up to 1,500 premature deaths annually from heart disease, the EPA has estimated.

The cut marks the latest twist in what public health advocates view as a dismaying battle over replacing the nation’s lead water lines. Advocates say it should be an issue with broad bipartisan support that is amply funded without a fight.

Joe Biden’s EPA in 2024 put in place a rule requiring all lead lines to be replaced within 10 years. However, Republicans have repeatedly tried to sabotage lead line replacement efforts in recent years, in part because of pressure from an unlikely but powerful opponent – water utilities that don’t want to make infrastructure upgrades.

Removing the lines is a challenging task because so many remain. The EPA in 2024 estimated that as many as 9m lead lines must be replaced, though Donald Trump’s EPA last year made a controversial change that reduced the figure to 4m after it altered the methodology.

The $125m that Congress cut is part of $15bn made available for lead service line replacement in the 2021, Biden-backed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the bipartisan infrastructure law.

The law required the government to provide $3bn annually to states over five years to replace lead service lines, which are the pipes that move water to homes and businesses. The Trump EPA released the 2025 funding late, and the last $3bn tranche would be distributed this year.

“You can replace a lot of lead pipes for $125m,” said Erik Olson, a senior adviser to the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. He called the cut “pennywise and poundfoolish” because multiple studies have found that the upfront investment in replacing pipes costs dramatically less than paying for the health impacts on the back end.

An earlier draft of the bill proposed slashing $250m, but House Democrats, led by Tlaib and the Michigan congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who coordinated a letter to Senate leaders signed by 43 other members of Congress, were able to save half.

The problem is most serious in Chicago, where crews have replaced less than 4% of the city’s approximately 400,000 lead service lines. It would take about $3bn to replace the remaining lines.

The Democratic Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth said it was “obscene” for the Trump administration to cut funding for clean drinking water projects while increasing funding for ICE, which has carried out violent operations in Chicago.

While the $125m represents only a small portion of the upcoming $3bn tranche, Olson noted that the GOP made other cuts to water infrastructure, and the Trump administration proposed a 90% reduction in safe drinking water funding. The fight is far from over.

“We are worried about the signal this sends – that lead pipes aren’t a high priority, and once you start clawing back money, it doesn’t bode well for future funding,” Olson said.