WASHINGTON — It's called the Alliance for Safe and Responsible Lead Abatement. Its target audience is Americans concerned about the environment. And its stated goal is to protect drinking water from being poisoned by lead paint removed from older homes and apartment buildings.
But behind the alliance's efforts is a $50-million-a-year industry whose specialized service would be jeopardized by an Environmental Protection Agency proposal.
The EPA wants to drop federal rules requiring that certain steps be taken to contain building debris contaminated with lead paint. Instead, the agency would let contractors dump the material in landfills. The lead-abatement industry says that could result in drinking water contaminated with lead, which is especially harmful to children.
To challenge the EPA proposal, the industry is following a time-tested lobbying tactic that has proliferated in the 1990s: An interest group forms a coalition with a memorable name, hires a Washington lobbyist and uses grass-roots appeals to attract support from a public often unaware of the monetary interests behind the campaign.
The alliance is spending $40,000 for a hydrologist's study to rebut EPA's conclusion that looser regulations won't harm drinking water. It is getting its message to the public through newspaper opinion page columns and news stories.
It also has recruited environmental organizations to the cause, sending them a letter warning of the threat to ground water: "While this regulation may speed up the removal of lead-based paint from older buildings, it simultaneously will move the lead closer to our water supply."
The letter doesn't mention that the group is supported by an industry with a financial interest in defeating the rules.
Industry officials say their main motive is to protect the public from a harmful government action.
"Lead in drinking water is such a much greater potential concern in the future after we take this short-term solution and remove all this lead and put it somewhere where it is still unsafe," said alliance executive director Jim Wachtel. His company, NexTec, makes products used in lead paint removal.
One environmental organization, the Maryland-based Anacostia Watershed Society, has joined the fight.
"Any kind of a national regulation that would endanger ground water is of serious concern," said Jim Connolly, the group's executive director.
