CT taking applications for new $20M lead remediation program

Connecticut residents can now apply for a new state program that will remediate lead paint in their homes, the latest step in a larger plan to cut down on lead poisoning in a state with aging infrastructure, officials announced Wednesday.

The state’s Department of Public Health is working with the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to clean up lead in between 250 and 350 homes using $20 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars. Homeowners or renters are eligible to apply, and the program doesn’t have income restrictions.

Properties where a pregnant person or a child under 6 lives are eligible for the free abatement. State officials also said some of the properties will likely be at-home child care centers and that apartment buildings can get remediated even if a child under 6 or pregnant person doesn’t live in every unit.

Lead poisoning is a particularly pressing issue in Connecticut because much of the state’s housing stock is old and predates the shift from using lead paint that began in the 1970s.

“It’s easy for me to say, ‘Kids, don’t eat lead paint,’” said Gov. Ned Lamont at a Wednesday press conference. “But we’re talking about 2, 3, 4, 5-year-olds. We’re talking about old homes. We’re talking about paint that has been there for a while, chipping off. A lot of it’s in the dust, and we’re doing everything we can.”

The state plans to next use money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan to remediate lead in water pipelines. A third phase of the effort will address lead in public use buildings such as schools.

The state already has 28 homes in the pipeline to participate in the first part of the program, said Chris Corcoran, manager of the Connecticut Healthy Homes Program at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.

Connecticut Children’s will review applications to the program and assess what remediation needs to be done. Then, contractors will complete the work, Corcoran said.

The program is free for participants. Tenants or homeowners can apply. Renters can apply anonymously to start the process, although their landlords will have to agree to work with the state for remediation to take place, said Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani.

Lead poisoning has an array of symptoms including stomach pain, sluggishness and developmental delays, and it is particularly harmful to young children and pregnant people.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, called on the federal government to do more to deal with lead poisoning issues.

“The federal government ought to be doing more, and that’s why we should regard this program in Connecticut as a model for what states should be doing across the country,” Blumenthal said.

Connecticut law requires that every child between the ages of 9 months and 35 months get tested for lead poisoning each year. The state also has requirements that all units in an apartment with children under 6 get tested if one child tests above the normal limits for lead poisoning.

The new program aims to be more preventative. Rather than responding to cases of children who have already been poisoned, officials want to prevent it in the first place, Juthani said.

Many of the people affected by this issue are people with low incomes and people of color who live in some of the older housing in the cities, officials said.

Blumenthal said it’s also a rural issue, pointing to a recent case in which a Putnam apartment building dealt with cases of lead poisoning and heightened levels of lead throughout the building.

That apartment complex received state funding, but initial lead remediation wasn’t done thoroughly inside the building. Tenants unionized to demand answers, and the Environmental Protection Agency and state Attorney General William Tong intervened.

Juthani said this program is new and will be more holistic than some other programs.

“What we would really like to happen in this situation, is a home is identified, and the whole project gets done — soup to nuts — where we can say that there’s none of these holes where people can fall into,” she said.

DPH did early outreach with landlords to push for them to participate. The department got feedback from landlords and hoped that word would spread after the engagement efforts, said DPH Deputy Commissioner Lisa Morrissey.

“The homeowner, the landlord, is the responsible party,” Juthani said. “But we are empowering tenants to fill out the [web]site, and that’ll get the process started. So that’s our way of trying to hold those landlords accountable, because we’re empowering tenants.”

The Lamont administration has focused on lead remediation over the past couple of years and in 2022 pushed for legislation to expand lead testing among Connecticut’s children. The new campaign with DPH aims to educate parents and encourage more lead testing among Connecticut’s children, in addition to the remediation, according to a news release .

More information about the program and the application process is available online .