In hot water! Chip and Joanna Gaines have settled with the Environmental Protection Agency after allegedly violating a rule pertaining to lead paint safety.
The duo’s company, Magnolia Homes, was fined $40,000 and must “take steps to ensure compliance with lead-based paint regulations in future renovation projects, address lead-based paint hazards at high-risk homes in Waco, Texas, and educate the public to lead-based paint hazards and appropriate renovation procedures.”
According to the EPA, Chip, 43, and Joanna, 40, broke the Renovating, Remodeling and Painting Rule (RRP Rule) on their former show, Fixer Upper. The rule requires businesses to take necessary precautions when working on homes built before 1978 in order to minimize lead exposure. The Gaines violated specific elements of the rule including failure to obtain EPA certification, not assigning a certified renovator to properties, not providing a pamphlet to home owners, not posting warning signs and disregarding the general work place standards.
However, once the costar couple’s firm was penalized, they “took immediate steps to ensure compliance with the RRP Rule, including to obtain RRP certification and training for the firm and its staff and to ensure active compliance across all ongoing renovation projects,” the EPA noted.
In addition to paying the fine, the HGTV stars also demonstrated how to properly remove lead paint in a March episode and vowed to spend $160,000 on a lead-paint reduction program for homes and child-occupied facilities in Waco.
The notice added that Magnolia Homes also “made the decision to implement a compliance management program in which it adopted an enhanced renovation record-keeping checklist for use by Magnolia Homes staff and subcontractors.”
Fixer Upper ran for five seasons from 2013 to 2018 and aired its finale in April. Joanna, who is expecting her fifth child with Chip, reflected on the emotional final season via a web post at the time.
“This season of life has been rewarding, challenging, unbelievably fast and furious and nearly everything in between,” she wrote. “Back in September when Chip and I posed the blog announcing that this season would be our last, it still seemed so far away … For us, the end of this final season marks the beginning of a new one. If you would have told me that I’d end this season of the show pregnant with our fifth baby, I wouldn’t laughed. “Like the entire Fixer Upper opportunity as a whole, life has a way of surprising us.”
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