Trenton is one of two New Jersey communities getting federal grants to address lead in water.
New Jersey residents watched in horror as media reports chronicled the deadly state of the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, where unacceptable amounts of lead posed a danger to public health.
And then the horror came home.
After community activists demanded more attention to our own state's lead problems, children in 11 Garden State cities were found to have higher levels of the toxic element in their blood than their counterparts in Flint.
Now Trenton will be receiving federal dollars to help address the problem. The aid comes in the form of grants from the Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration program, an initiative of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and from healthy homes supplemental funding.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) announced the grants that will go to Trenton ($2.1 million) and to Newark ($3.4 million) last week - a ray of sunshine after months of despair.
Federal funds headed to Newark, Trenton
Reputable studies show the devastating effects lead has on the developing brains of children, including cognitive damages, memory loss and learning disabilities.
In the aging infrastructure of New Jersey's inner cities, the contamination comes from two sources: lead paint in the cities' public housing stock, and water, particularly in the school districts.
Children age 6 and younger have continued to ingest lead from paint in windows, doors and other woodwork commonly found in older homes, Elyse Pivnick, director of environmental health for Isles, Inc., said earlier this year.
Pivnick's Trenton-based community development organization was among the advocacy groups rallying for a renewed focus on the impact of that contamination.
Is it too late for N.J. schools to test for lead?
Largely as a result of their efforts, 145 housing units in Trenton will soon begin the process of remediation.
Staci Berger, president and chief executive officer of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, lauded the federal funding as a big step forward.
The grants are especially crucial in light of Gov. Chris Christie's pocket veto earlier this year of a bill that would have restored to the state's budget $10 million in funding for the Lead Hazard Control Assistance Fund.
Earmarked for the removal of lead from older homes, the money also would have financed home inspections and emergency relocations of affected families, as well as educational programs for the public.
The lead particles our youngsters are inhaling in their homes, or swallowing with every trip to the water cooler at school, won't disappear on their own. But the problem has a solution, and we're grateful that someone at the highest levels of government is listening.
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