SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/189717_lead07.html
School water quality remains focus
Seattle's effort entails bottle dispensers,
repairs
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
By GREGORY ROBERTS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
When Seattle Public Schools open for the 2004-05 academic year tomorrow,
most students will see a familiar holdover from last spring in the hallways:
bottled-water dispensers.
But over the next couple of weeks, students throughout the school district
also will see something new: signs in the lavatories warning them not to
drink the tap water.
The dispensers and signs reflect the ongoing efforts by the 47,500-student
district to cope with a multimillion-dollar problem of lead contamination in
school water supplies.
The scope of those efforts could change significantly depending on what the
School Board decides, likely at its Sept. 15 meeting.
The district woke up to the problem last school year after parents at
Wedgwood Elementary, troubled by discolored water in drinking-water
fountains, conducted tests that discovered lead contamination at levels
above the federally recommended maximum of 20 parts per billion.
The district turned off fountains and began supplying bottled water in
January at those schools with plumbing systems more than 7 years old and
commissioned tests at all schools.
The tests uncovered widespread contamination, with about 25 percent of the
2,400 drinking fountains and classroom faucets tested exceeding the 20 ppb
threshold. At some schools, only a few fountains failed; at others, most
did.
Lead is toxic to the nervous system, especially in children aged 5 or
younger, and can affect intelligence and hearing.
At high levels, it can cause brain damage. Drinking water is considered a
supplemental source of lead exposure, ranking behind old lead paint and
contaminated soil. Lead typically enters water-supply systems from brass
valves and fittings on pipes, faucets or fountains, as the brass contains
lead.
Over the summer, the district has undertaken repairs at many schools, with
work ranging from repair of a failing fountain or two to complete
replacement of supply pipes. As a result, 21 schools have passed new tests
and will no longer be supplied with bottled water, joining the 16 schools
with newer plumbing systems in meeting the federal standard.
But 58 schools will continue to receive bottled water. Deliveries may stop
at some of those schools within a few months, as repairs are completed;
others will stay on bottled water for the entire school year or longer.
Here's an update on the repairs provided by administrator Ron English, who
is heading the program for the district.
· District plumbers are continuing to make repairs at 16 schools with fewer
than five fountains that failed the tests. When the repairs are finished,
fountains will be retested; if they pass, bottled-water deliveries will be
discontinued. At another 19 schools, the fountains have been turned back on
after completion of repairs and retesting.
· At 18 other schools with poorer results from the spring testing, repairs
will take longer, and bottled-water deliveries will continue.
· Plumbers this summer worked to replace the water-supply systems at
Fairmount Park, Schmitz Park and Wedgwood elementary schools and at the Nova
high school -- all of which had extensive and longstanding problems dating
to tests in the early 1990s. The new systems at Schmitz Park and Wedgwood
have passed tests, and those schools are no longer receiving bottled water.
At Fairmount Park, six fountains on the new system failed; English said
construction debris may be the culprit and the lines will be cleaned and
retested, with bottled-water deliveries continuing until the school passes
the tests. The replacement work is still under way at Nova, which will
continue to receive bottled water until the new system is completed and
passes tests.
· Three schools have been added to the list for total pipe replacement --
Lowell and View Ridge elementary schools and Aki Kurose Middle School -- but
because of contamination by iron, which discolors water but does not pose a
health threat; that work likely will be performed next summer.
Another 16 schools will be tested more thoroughly for iron contamination.
Bottled water deliveries will continue at all those schools
· Garfield and Cleveland high schools are scheduled for complete renovations
in the next two years, and administrators propose continuing bottled-water
deliveries to those schools.
· Testing has been completed but results are not yet available for the
Bilingual Orientation Center in the old Hay elementary school building, and
bottled-water deliveries will continue there.
The Seattle schools recently signed a $683,000 contract with Mountain Mist
Water Co. of Tacoma to supply bottled water for the 2004-05 school year to
all schools currently receiving it, along with room-temperature dispensers
and paper cone cups.
That sum could be reduced as schools go off the bottled-water program,
administrators said. The general fund budget for the year allocates $360,000
for bottled-water purchases, and any difference would have to be made up
from another source.
The district has not tested faucets in school lavatories. Instead,
administrators plan to post the signs in the coming weeks to warn students
against filling their own water bottles from those taps, English said.
In addition, letters will be mailed in the coming weeks to every family with
children in the schools, providing an update on the water-quality program,
English said.
He said he hopes to post the latest information to the district Web site
tomorrow.
The cost of the plumbing system and fountain repairs is not yet known,
English said, though he said it will be in the millions of dollars.
Those costs could go up if the School Board agrees with member Sally Soriano
and decides to apply a stricter contamination standard of 10 ppb and to test
lavatory faucets and replace any that fail. Soriano has cited studies
indicating harmful effects from low levels of lead exposure.
The board's policy and legislation committee, which Soriano chairs, voted
2-1 last month to stick with the strategy the administration has followed so
far: a 20 ppb standard and no testing of lavatory fountains. The full board
is expected to consider the issue Sept. 15.
A 10 ppb standard would add 300 fountains to the current list for
replacement, which would cost an estimated $818,000 extra, English said.
Including lavatory faucets in the program would add an estimated $1.2
million, he said.
The school district spent about $500,000 on testing and about $300,000 on
bottled water in 2003-04, administrators have said.
School districts supplied by a public water system, as in Seattle, are not
required to test for lead, nor to comply with the federal recommendation on
maximum contamination.
TO LEARN MORE
· For individual Seattle school test results and information about water
quality, visit www.seattleschools.org
· For more stories on Seattle Public Schools' lead troubles, see
www.seattlepi.com/specials/lead/.
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