State testing for lead in school drinking water

BOSTON — It's now an early morning ritual.

Every day before students arrive at the Boston Arts Academy, a worker runs every water fountain for two minutes.

It's called "flushing" and it's now standard operating procedure at all Boston Public Schools.

"That is the best way to get lead out of the water" said Tommy Chang, Superintendent of Boston Public Schools.

Flushing allows the water fountain to expel any water that has been sitting in the pipes overnight.

Chang says when they're not flushing, they're testing.

And some of the results aren't good. This summer, tests found elevated lead levels in seven of his schools.  The faucets in those buildings were shut off and bottled water is now being shipped in. Massachusetts law only requires school districts to test two faucets in two schools, every six months.

"We're testing every single year and every single water fountain" said Chang.

The problem is not limited to Boston.

"It's an old building. We all knew that, so I don't think it surprised me terribly much" said Deana Becker, she has two kids that go to the Johnson Elementary School in Natick.

This year the Natick school district found high levels of lead and copper in eight schools. In response, Natick replaced many of the fountains and say they now flush for 2 to 5 minutes every day.

The accepted level of lead in drinking water is 15 parts per billion set by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Anything above that is considered potentially hazardous. The EPA website states 'Young children, infants, and fetuses are particularly vulnerable to lead because the physical and behavioral effects of lead occur at lower exposure levels in children than in adults.'

"From the crisis in Flint, we've heard a lot more about the health effects of lead" said Becky Smith, Massachusetts campaigns director of Clean Water Action.

Smith is an advocate for pushing schools to test more. She says a simple $60 test can tell you all you need to know.

"Lead is a toxic legacy that we've built into our buildings. It's really unfortunate. It's scary but it is avoidable." Said Smith

Earlier this year Governor Baker rolled out a $2 million program to help educate and test schools across the state.

Martin Suuberg, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection says they started this initiative so they could test as many taps as possible.

The DEP tells us that 14 school buildings have found water fountains with elevated lead levels this year and that doesn't include testing from Massachusetts Water Resource Authority (MWRA) communities.  They just started testing schools this fall at the start of the school year.  So far they've tested 42 schools and plan on testing more in the next three weeks.

"I think $2 million will get us a good long way. I think certainly for the schools we're dealing with" said Suuberg.

We went along with a DEP contractor as they took samples from Johnson Elementary School in Nahant. Johnson was one of the first schools this year to have all their water fountains cleared by the state.

The process of gathering water is simple. A school employee fills up two water bottles from each fountain. This usually takes place early in the morning before school starts. The DEP tells us that they test early because it gives time for any lead or copper from the pipes to seep into the water.  After they take the first sample, they run the fountain for 30 seconds to clear the pipes and then take a second sample.

The bottles are catalogued sent to labs around the state for testing. We’re told it takes between one to two weeks to find out the results.

Nahant is one of 160 school districts participating in the program. That's 930 buildings being tested across the state, only a small fraction of the 7,000 schools in Massachusetts, but Suuberg says it's a good start. After the crisis in Flint, he says schools are starting to get proactive.

"There's nothing that substitutes for sampling. The more results you have the more actual data you have the better you will know how your school is doing" said Suuberg.

Critics like Becky Smith believe more needs to be done and limited testing gives people a false sense of security.

"This problem is going to have a lot of zeros in it as far as a big price tag to remove all the lead pipes."

More Links

FOX25 Investigates: Lead water problem plaguing communities
http://www.fox25boston.com/news/tonight-at-10-fox25-investigates-lead-water-problem-plaguing-communities/271514257

Testing Results for All Boston Public Schools
https://drive.google.com/a/bostonpublicschools.org/file/d/0B3osZ-OFrOsQMUh5Z1RpZ3BBMHc/view

MWRA Service Line Grant
http://www.mwra.state.ma.us/01news/2016/032116-serviceline-funding.html

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