Water from schools with old pipes being tested for lead

By Sanjay Bhatt
Seattle Times staff reporter

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After the building custodian said the filter was installed properly, an irritated Green returned to the store where she bought the filter to demand a refund. A clerk told her the filter did work — but that sediment from the school's water pipes had blocked the flow.

"I was astounded it could be filled up so quickly," said Green, who heads her school's family and consumer-sciences department. She got her money back and then resumed her monthly ritual of unscrewing faucet screens and emptying the crud. That was five years ago.

Last week, the Seattle School District began testing the water at 74 schools, aiming to have the results back by June 15, said Ron English, a school-district attorney. The water will be tested at all schools built or renovated prior to 1997.

Water at the rest of the city's district-owned sites, where the pipes are newer or the buildings are closed, will be checked later.

Test results will be posted on the district's Web site as they become available, English said. The first three schools sampled — Fairmount Park, Schmitz Park and Wedgwood elementaries — could get their results in three weeks, he said.

The School Board decided in December that comprehensive testing was needed after two Wedgwood Elementary parents, both scientists, had water tested and found it exceeded federal lead limits. In January, the board also ordered the district to begin supplying bottled water to all 88 schools.

Leaded water — from corroding pipes, solder and fixtures — is likely a problem in nearly every school district in the country, reported the newspaper Education Week, which said schools in California, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia have had plumbing problems in the past year.

But water has never been found to be the source of lead poisoning for any child in this state. And while there is no "safe" level of lead in water, according to a study published this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, schools aren't required under state or federal law to routinely test their drinking water for safety.

In Seattle, Economic and Engineering Services (EES) of Bellevue, the district's consultant on its testing project, has been reviewing the water-quality data and construction drawings for each school.

In 1990, the district hired EES to test for lead in all its drinking fountains and afterward replaced many lead-leaching fixtures. Two years later, EES did follow-up tests and found that 62 percent of the fountains drew water that reached the federal-recommended limit of 20 parts per billion (ppb) or less.
 
But replacing the fountains at Nova Alternative High School and Schmitz Park, Fairmount Park and Wedgwood elementaries did not significantly reduce lead contamination. Lead levels in so-called "first draw" water samples were as high as 85 ppb at Wedgwood, a 49-year-old building.

Although the district's environmental coordinator recommended the plumbing in those four schools be replaced, it was never done.

Meanwhile, Seattle voters rejected capital-bond measures — four times from 1992 onward — before a scaled-down capital levy finally was approved in 1995.

At that time, district officials told school custodians to flush water fountains daily for 30 seconds in hopes that would be a suitable interim solution, maintenance manager Ed Heller said. There was no system in place, however, to ensure that flushing occurred routinely.

EES is to visit each school, look for signs of corrosion such as red stains on fountain fixtures, and do limited sampling for iron and sediment in the water, according to district records. The schools' pipes, which were turned off in December, are to be flushed for two minutes on two consecutive days to remove standing water before the full sampling begins.

The firm's staff members plan to enter schools in the morning before faculty and students arrive so they can still take "first draw" samples from water standing overnight.

English said the water will be analyzed by Laucks Testing Laboratories to see how it meets both health (lead, cadmium) and aesthetic (iron, color, cloudiness and zinc) standards. The firm also will test for bacteria.

The district isn't drawing water samples at Nova, English said, because contractors will replace the pipes there this summer.

These days at Rainier Beach High, Green once again is excited about the prospect of clean drinking water. In a federally sponsored health survey this school year, students there identified clean drinking water as their No. 1 wish.

Before January, when the district began providing bottled water, Rainier Beach students — 60 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunches — had to bring their own beverages from home or shell out $1 at a vending machine. Most students chose soda pop, which Green tries to discourage.

Even as the district's nutrition committee heard English deliver the good news earlier this week about water testing, some members shook their heads at the years the problems went unresolved.

"I've been working for the district for 18 years," said Madison Middle School nurse Samara Hoag. "I felt angry, because I've been telling the kids for years, 'Drink more water. Drink more water.' And they would say, 'The water is brown,' and I'd say, 'That's OK, it's just iron.' We weren't even informed about our own water."

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company