-by Silas Allen, originally published on October 6, 2014

 

DUNCAN — If you’re spending time in Duncan soon, consider packing bottled water.

Officials notified residents that the city’s drinking water had violated federal purity standards. City officials say the problem is the result of a prolonged drought that has left city reservoirs several feet below normal.

Results of water quality tests in Duncan between July 2013 and July 2014 showed elevated levels of trihalomethanes, a type of contaminant that appears as a byproduct when water is chlorinated. Although the contaminant levels exceeded standards set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the city’s water is safe to drink for most people, said Scott Vaughn, the city’s public works director.

“You don’t need to boil the water, for instance,” Vaughn said. “It was not and is not an immediate health concern.”

Some people who drink water with elevated levels of trihalomethanes for many years could develop liver, kidney or central nervous system problems, according to the EPA. Drinking water with high levels of trihalomethanes every day for decades also could cause a slight risk of cancer, the agency reports.

Although the immediate risk is small, Duncan city officials advised elderly residents, those with severely weakened immune systems and parents of infants to consult a doctor about possible health effects.

Vaughn said the problem is because of a serious drought that has gripped Stephens County for the past four years. Duncan averages about 38 inches of rain per year, according to the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. But the city’s total rainfall has fallen below that average for several years, the survey reports.

In 2011 and 2012, the city received about 15 inches of rain for the entire year — less than half of what it could expect to receive in a typical year.

Although the city has fared somewhat better since then, the rainfall hasn’t been enough to make up for the damage that was done in 2011 and 2012, Vaughn said. Waurika Lake, the city’s primary source of drinking water, stands about 32 percent of its normal capacity. As water levels plummeted, water quality suffered, Vaughn said, leading to the increased levels of trihalomethanes.

Another part of the problem stems, ironically, from the success of the city’s water conservation efforts. As reservoir levels dropped, city officials implemented water conservation measures. The city is under Stage 4 water restrictions, which limit outdoor watering to one day a week.

 

-by Barbara Christiansen, originally posted on September 29, 2014

 

 

Published on August 25, 2014

A new study out of Maine suggests that residents across the New England state are regularly subjected to drinking water containing double the amount of fluoride considered to be dangerous by federal guidelines.

Residents from across the Pine Tree State were asked to voluntarily take samples from the private wells they rely on for drinking water, and ten different towns—including eight within a single county—tested higher than hoped for.

Scientific American published the results of the study last week, and the article’s author, Dina Fine Maron, wrote that the details suggest many Mainers are introducing dangerous amounts of fluoride to their bodies due to an absence of regulation.

According to Maron, most of the state relies on private wells when it comes to getting water. Unlike public water sources, however, the water that Mainers drink every single day is spared stringent testing.

“Like the majority of the state, many of Dedham’s denizens rely on private wells for the water they drink, bathe in and perhaps use to make infant milk formula. But the water trickling from the tap—unlike water from its public water sources—goes untested and is not subject to any state or federal guidelines,” Maron wrote. “And although homeowners are encouraged to get their water regularly tested to ensure that worrisome levels of bacteria or naturally occurring minerals have not crept in, many residents do not follow that advice.”

“Yet newly available data, released in recent months, indicates that in some 10 communities in the state wells harbor dangerously high levels of fluoride. In some cases, the wells contain more than double the level that the US Environmental Protection Agency has deemed the acceptable maximum exposure level,” she added.

In the town that Maron made a point of particularly addressing, Dedham, 37.8 percent of the wells tested to be well beyond the state’s guidelines with regards to fluoride concentration, according to the Scientific America report. Although public treatment plants regularly add fluoride to water sources in order to prevent tooth decay, an abundance of the element can be enough to cause brittle bones or, according to some studies, decreased intelligence. In both China and Iran, for example, researchers have suggested that dangerously high levels of fluoride concentration are responsible for lower IQ scores.

“The sort of levels we’re talking about that are high in China are the sort of levels we see in some private wells,” Andrew Smith, Maine state toxicologist, told Scientific America.

According to Robert Marvinney, the director of the Maine Geological Survey, the reason for abnormally high levels of fluoride within the state is a direct result of the granite found in the earth, particularly in Hancock County where Dedham, ME is located.
That isn’t to say that Dedham is an outlier, however; Moran relied on all samples that were voluntarily submitted, and in turn was able to analyze data from around 25 percent of towns across the state. Of those, 10 demonstrated levels considered to be dangerous.

“I’m certain the number of wells that have this problem is smaller than those that have high arsenic, but this reinforces the need for people to test their wells,” added Marvinney.

 

Uranium’s deadly flow

THE NAVAJO NATION ESTIMATES THAT 54,000 NAVAJOS HAUL WATER FROM UNREGULATED WELLS AND STOCK PONDS NUMBERING IN THE LOW THOUSANDS.

BLACK FALLS — Teeth clack involuntarily and tools rattle on the floor board under the backseat of Milton Yazzie’s Silverado as he and his frail mother bounce along the washboard-creased dirt road from their home.

For mile after dusty mile, rise after rutted descent, the truck rocks toward the dry river and then Flagstaff, the screech of Led Zeppelin on the radio inside and of a high-desert wind outside. Three plastic barrels bounce along in the truck bed.

It’s water day on the reservation.

Twice a week, the Yazzies, 57-year-old Milton and 83-year-old Della, come down off their lonely hill on the Navajo Reservation’s western side and point themselves toward the city for the clean water they need to keep living. For ages, they drank from a well less than a mile from their home. Then they learned that poison lurked there.

Uranium is gurgling up all over Navajo country.

At least three Yazzies have died of kidney ailments, a common result of chronic exposure to uranium. Federal environmental officials warned against drinking more. Milton learned to conserve, using an outhouse across their driveway and leaving the tank-supplied indoor plumbing to Della, because of her failing eyesight.

He begged the tribe, the feds, anyone who would listen, to build a pipeline through the sparsely populated Black Falls area, southeast of Cameron.

“I’ve been working so hard all these years to get good drinking water,” he said, “and it never came.”

Though they live out of anyone’s sight, the Yazzies are far from alone in their hardship.

When World War II spawned the nation’s nuclear program and then a nuclear-arms race, companies came digging. They unleashed a radioactive element that would leach into wells and springs. Not until decades later — and decades after many of the mining companies departed — would Painted Desert inhabitants know the real hazards left to them. Even today, true cleanup is in its infancy, with an uncertain growth chart.

The Navajo Nation estimates that 54,000 Navajos haul water from unregulated wells and stock ponds numbering in the low thousands, potentially putting them at risk for contamination from previously untested sources.

Thousands more, like the Yazzies, know the poison is in their communal wells. Water is the first thing on their minds whenever they leave home.

Parts of the reservation, especially in and around towns, are on treated, piped water systems, often coming from pristine lakes. Their water is good.

But in the remote sheepherding hills beyond the wired world, springs and windmills are the only sources. More than 10 percent of 240 unregulated sources that the Environmental Protection Agency tested were found to have pollution exceeding federal drinking-water standards for uranium or radioactive particles.

 

Across the hills southeast of the Yazzie home, Box Springs is one such source that has poisoned many unsuspecting people for decades.

Not far from Grand Falls on the Little Colorado, the well is tucked in a red sandstone arroyo with bleached soils and a big cottonwood tree that conspicuously advertises the rare occurrence of water.

The federal drinking-water limit is 30 micrograms — millionths of grams — of uranium per liter. Box Springs tested at 35 micrograms. It’s less than some others, which tested as high as 700 micrograms. But over a lifetime, the exposure accumulates.

Most residents, but not all, have stopped using the water.

The government drilled a test well by the river to replace Box Springs, but that water was too salty.

Since 2008, the EPA, along with Indian Health Service and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, put $27 million into upgrading reservation water delivery. Fourteen projects, when complete, will pipe water to more than 800 homes. One of the projects also enhances water quality for about 1,000 homes that already had running water.

Down dirt roads like the Yazzies’, or the dead end at Box Springs, building a web of pipes to sparse pockets of homes is cost-prohibitive. Instead, the EPA paid for a trucking program that sends four tanker trucks to various meeting places once a week. The trucks can serve up to 3,000 homes.

Yazzie has waited in line before, and has been turned away when the water ran out. He no longer relies on it.

Now, the most basic requirement for survival takes planning and gasoline.

Wool doesn’t pay the bills. Yazzie earns a small income acting as his mother’s home health aide. Those weekly checks plus his late father’s pension enable the pair to keep topping off the tank and filling up barrels in town and allow mother to live in the land of her youth and keep son connected to his ancestors.

“As long as I can still haul water,” he said, “I’ll stay here till I die.”

In winter, the drive to Flagstaff can take two hours or more in each direction. That’s if muddy roads and a strong flow in the Little Colorado River keep him from crossing and force him to detour through the village of Leupp.

For such eventualities, he stocks up on bottled water whenever it is on sale at Flagstaff supermarkets. He can’t afford to be completely out when storms blow across the desert as they did last winter.

“We didn’t go nowhere for two weeks,” said Yazzie, a self-described former wild child in cargo shorts, high-top sneakers, sweatshirt and bandanna.

In the dry season, it’s about an hour to town.

On a June weekday morning, he loaded his three 55-gallon drums onto the pickup, draining what little was left in one into a Coleman cooler before rolling toward Flagstaff.

“I can’t waste no water,” he said.

 

On this day, the river was dry, the 50-mile path to town clear. He helped Della into the passenger seat at 10:25 a.m., and rattled out the road to Black Falls crossing, dust on black rock. They rolled onto blacktop and on through Wupatki National Monument, past haunting ancient Puebloan rock ruins that overlook the rolling plains.

At noon, Yazzie parked outside Flagstaff City Hall, where his mother handed him a $20 bill to reload their water account with a clerk inside. Each barrel subtracts about 40 cents from the account.

From there, they drove several blocks to a city pump, where an overhead hose hung from a crane arm. A city inspection report listed scheduled testing results — including no violations for uranium.

Yazzie swung the steel arm over his truck and dropped the hose into one barrel. Within about five minutes, all three barrels were full, and Yazzie tied off their caps with plastic bags.

He went searching for cheap gas at Fry’s, where he noticed the price had gone up 2 cents a gallon, to $3.49, since his visit a few days earlier. Inside the grocery store, he gathered some chicken quarters, eggs, fruit and ice to keep them on the journey home, then two 24-packs of bottled water at $2.47 apiece.

After lunch at a Chinese buffet, Yazzie perused Sam’s Club for some bread and melons, then headed for home, arriving just after 4, about 120 new miles on the truck. Before unloading at home, he switched to an older pickup and drove a half-mile to fill a couple of drums at his former watering hole — a well that the EPA told him had elevated uranium at “borderline” dangerous levels. He still uses that water for his livestock and vegetable garden.

Studies have shown that some of the radioactivity in exposed foods, particularly livestock organs, can pass to humans. But the dose from this well is less than others on the reservation.

Yazzie’s water-hauling regimen is beyond what some others in need are able or willing to endure every week. The EPA noted in a 2013 report on the water upgrades that some residents had reopened capped wells and started using contaminated water.

 

One of them is Rolanda Tohannie. She lives just over a rise from Box Springs, one of the sources that the EPA closed.

“Most of my family is gone,” she said. “They all died of kidney failure. They blame that on the water.”

She has had tumors removed from her stomach and the back of her head.

“I believe they have taken out all of the uranium in me,” she said.

Still, she said, the water tastes better than bottled, and it’s most convenient to use what’s readily available. So she routinely uses Box Springs water for washing and gardening, and sometimes for coffee or drinking.

“It’s refreshing,” she said. “It makes the coffee taste better. It’s an artesian well.”

Tohannie, 51, tried having family members haul water from Leupp, but it was too salty.

The water-hauling trucks are not convenient, and people are frequently confused about when they arrive, Tohannie said. She is on disability for issues unrelated to uranium, and cannot make frequent trips to Flagstaff.

“I don’t have a choice” about using the water, she said.

Linda Begay, 48, believes Box Springs uranium contamination caused her mother’s cancer and her own bladder infections and hematuria — blood in the urine and a possible sign of kidney problems. She now meets the tanker truck weekly to supply her family’s home and stock troughs, as well as her parents’ nearby home and hogan.

Her grandmother died in the 1980s of stomach cancer. That was the start of painful and mysterious ailments afflicting the family.

Her dad has skin lesions that are flaky and sometimes gooey. Her mom has suffered colon cancer, and had a 2-inch piece of intestine removed in a Phoenix hospital.

Her husband, an asphalt worker with long daily commutes, is healthy. But he grew up as a foster child in Utah, California and Colorado, away from the poison.

“I have the bladder infections all my life,” Begay said.

Of 19 households in the surrounding hills, she said, half have been visited by cancer.

“I think I’m going to get cancer,” she said.

 

The tribe’s 4,000-gallon water truck arrives early on Mondays at a scheduled gathering spot, and stays until 11a.m. or until it is empty, whichever comes first. Begay can fetch 250 gallons at a time in her pickup, and some weeks is able to return three times before the water is gone.

She returns home to dump some of the water in a holding tank, and some in the troughs where every evening dozens of dog-chaperoned sheep return from the parched range to the corrals behind the house.

It’s enough, with strict conservation measures such as shutting off the water while scrubbing in the shower.

But if the truck breaks down and doesn’t make it, she must drive a couple of hours to Flagstaff for water for her sheep. She feels safer drinking Flagstaff water, and often retrieves bottles of it when she is in town.

Begay’s two sons, Andre and Quentin, are in the military. Her daughter, Ashley, is at college in Durango, Colo.

When they return, as she expects they will, they won’t live on the homestead.

But for her, home is home, regardless.

“I don’t want to leave this place,” she said. “It’s not going to be as good (elsewhere). It feels like home, even with all this uranium.

“I just feel like if I keep my shoes on and drink water from Flagstaff, I’ll be OK.”

As she discussed her predicament late last winter, a neighbor from down the road called to ask whether the Little Colorado was passable by truck that day. He was heading to Flagstaff for water.

So why don’t they follow the clean water and move to the city?

“We (wouldn’t) know what to do,” Yazzie said. “We can’t raise sheep out in the middle of the street.”

Without him and others who feel that way, he sees little hope that anyone will restore or protect the land.

Around a bend from his house at Black Falls, near where he pumps suspect water for his sheep, he has painted a wooden sign warning thieves about taking massive hunks of petrified wood from the hillside. He has seen them do it before, using cranes to lift the valuable stone onto trucks.

He wants the land and its minerals intact, looking the way it did when his ancestors hid from Kit Carson’s army, the way it did when they returned after forced relocation to New Mexico.

“We are trying to live up to what they fought so hard for,” Yazzie said.

-By Brian Melican, originally posted on February 26, 2014

 

Our columnist explains why requesting a glass of nature’s finest could land you in very hot water with your host

-By Tim Friend for National Geographic, originally published on February 17, 2014

 

The West Virginia chemical spill brings attention to a broader national problem.

Heavy pollution of river water by household and industrial waste in the Indonesian province of West Java is threatening the health of at least five million people living on the riverbanks, say government officials and water experts.

Poor sanitation and hygiene cause 50,000 deaths annually in Indonesia, with untreated sewage resulting in over six million tons of human waste being released into inland water bodies, according to an ongoing study by the World Bank.

Ibu Sutria, 53, lives in a wooden shack on the banks of West Java’s Krukut River, which runs approximately 20km south from the capital, Jakarta, to the city of Depok. “Sometimes the river is clean, sometimes it’s dirty,” she said. Sutria suffers from regular bouts of stomach ache and diarrhoea, and says the river is constantly flooded.

“People use the river for a toilet and children play in it because they have nowhere else to swim.” She and others in her community use nearby ground water to wash themselves because they think it is cleaner than river water.

Pak Jumari, 35, is a leader of a community group living along the Ciliwung River, which runs north for 97km from the West Java city of Bogor. Since 2010 he has been using a boat to keep his own section of the Ciliwung clean by scooping out rubbish. “We find many detergents and soaps in the river, “he said. “We no longer use it for washing or drinking.”

Fishermen on the Ciliwung use “blast fishing” – bombs made of kerosene and fertilizer to kill fish so they are easier to catch – which has worsened pollution. Nevertheless, his community still fishes in the river, with few reported ill effects, he said.

Reasons for pollution

The Deputy Minister of the Indonesian Environment Ministry, Hendri Bastaman, told IRIN that pollution in West Java’s rivers is worsening, particularly in the Ciliwung and Citarum, where five million people live along the riverbanks.

“Much of the waste is dumped into rivers from households,” said Bastaman. “People are using these rivers as personal toilets. We’ve also found mercury in river water, which we suspect is coming from companies or those running small-scale mining activities close to the rivers.”

Health risks

Muhammad Rez Sahib, advocacy coordinator of KRuHA, a Jakarta-based coalition of more than 30 Indonesian NGOs focusing on safe water access, said none of the capital’s rivers could be viewed as safe for human use.

“Even the water suppliers in Jakarta don’t use the water here because it is so polluted,” he said. “Instead, they use water from the Citarum River, which is also heavily polluted. Even after this water is treated it’s still unsafe to drink.” The Citarum flows north from Bandung, the capital of West Java, for approximately 300km to the Java Sea.

Safe water alternatives for poor communities are “few and far between” Sahib noted. “Many will turn to use ground water, but due to a poor sewage system and open defecation, 90 percent of ground water in Jakarta is contaminated by E.coli bacteria. Many infant deaths are caused by this bacteria – E.coli is the main threat to human life from these rivers.”

Edward Carwardine, spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Indonesia, noted that in West Java the use of “improved water” – obtained from taps, boreholes, covered wells and springs – falls below the national average, with only half of the population (approximately 20 million) able to access it.

“When families don’t have access to improved water sources, disease is much more likely,” said Carwardine. “Nearly a quarter of all deaths amongst children under five in Indonesia are caused by diarrhoeal disease.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that nationwide more than 20,000 children in this age group die every year from diarrhoea.

Dengue fever and malaria, both spread by mosquitoes that thrive in stagnant water, account for an additional 3 percent of overall child deaths, according to Carwardine, who said more focus is needed to end the widespread practice of defecating in the open.

The Environment Ministry’s Bastaman said the government is using educational campaigns to raise awareness of the dangers of unsafe water and to end defecation in rivers.

“For the Ciliwung we have a 10-year plan to restore the river’s health,” said Bastaman. “But for the Citarum, it’s impossible to get it back to the way it was prior to being polluted. The pollution is just too much.”

-By Andrew Schaeffer/Arizona-Sonora News Service originally posted on September 22, 2011

 

Arsenic levels in Tombstone’s tap water have increased because the town’s supply of mountain water has been reduced and well usage increased, but residents continue to drink from the faucet.

“I’ve lived here for 17 years, and I’ve always drank right from the tap,” said Kari Lord, manager of Tombstone General Store. “Everyone I know still drinks from the tap, too.”

The store is one of the few local sellers of bottled water, but Lord said she has not seen an increase in the demand for their imported water.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” she said. “And I think the rest of the town feels the same way.”

Susan Addison, an owner of Ike’s Mini Market, agreed. Her gas station/mini-mart also has free tap water for patrons, and she said people still come in to get that over bottled water.

“I still drink it,” she said. “The water’s been passed by the state. I think it’s still safe. It’s just higher levels of arsenic.”

 

Tombstone normally mixes its arsenic-rich well water with water pumped from three springs in the Huachuca Mountains. The pipes transporting that water to Tombstone, however, were damaged after this summer’s Monument Fire and subsequent floods in the mountain.

Addison said she was concerned about the town’s water situation but more over the amount of water available than its quality. If a large fire broke out in town, for example, officials may not have enough water to put it out and provide enough drinking water for the residents.

She said she hopes the $50,000 state grant the city received to pay the town’s new public works project manager to repair pipelines from the springs will help.

“One pipe [from the springs] is flowing already,” she said.

Addison said there are stories circulating around town about people and dogs getting sick from the water, but “I still haven’t seen anybody glowing in the dark.”

With the tourist season picking up again, the issue of the visitors’ safety comes into play.

Ron Arko, owner of the Tombstone Motel, said he was unaware of the heightened levels.

“If it were a big deal, we’d all be dead,” he said, laughing.

Arko said he’ll continue to drink water from the tap.

One local beverage seller has turned the arsenic news into a new business venture.

Johnny Fields said he had the idea to sell bottled water for some time, but did not get started until the pipes from the Huachuca Mountains were damaged.

His sarsaparilla business has now expanded to include bottled water adorned with a skull and crossbones.

Though the label on his “Tombstone Tolerable Water” says is from local wells and advises to “drink at your own risk,” the liquid is not from an old Tombstone mine.

“It’s from Phoenix,” Fields said through a grin. “I’m not selling water full of arsenic.” He added that the mine on the bottle does not even exist.

Business started slowly two months ago when he started selling the water, but it is beginning to pick up, he said.

“People pick this up and chuckle,” he added. “If everything I sell makes people smile or laugh, I’m happy.”

 

-by Pelican Water, originally posted on January 5, 2015

Most Americans believe their drinking water is safe from unhealthy levels of chemicals and contaminants. According to a report from the website 24/7 Wall St, this isn’t necessarily the case. Profiled by NBC News, the study looked at 48,000 communities across 45 states. It showed that a number have drinking water with chemicals and pollutants that exceed limits set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

The Ten Worst Offenders

To assess overall water quality, communities were ranked based on total percentage of chemicals found, total number of contaminants found, and the most dangerous average level of a single pollutant. Based on the organization’s findings, the following cities stood out for having the worst drinking water:

1. Jacksonville, FL: With 23 different toxins, including high volumes of carcinogenic trihalomethanes, lead and arsenic, Jacksonville’s water appears to be anything but pure. In fact, during one test, trihalomethane levels were two times the EPA legal limit.

2. San Diego, CA: The country’s eighth-largest city provides water to numerous residents. Unfortunately, 24/7 Wall St says that water contains at least 20 contaminants, including two chemicals that exceeded the EPA’s legal limit.

3. North Las Vegas: Mostly fed by groundwater and the Colorado River, North Las Vegas’s water supply didn’t contain any chemicals exceeding legal limits. It did, however contain a total of 26 contaminants, including high levels of radioactive uranium.

4. Omaha, NE: Fed by the Missouri and Platte Rivers, Omaha’s water supply contained at least four chemicals above legal amounts, including manganese, nitrate and nitrite, trihalomethanes and atrazine, a herbicide linked to human birth defects.

5. Houston, TX: The fourth-largest U.S. city gets its water from Lake Houston, the San Jacinto Rivers and the Trinity River. Within this water, over 46 pollutants were detected, including radioactive alpha particles and haloacetic acids from disinfection byproducts.

6. Reno, NV: In addition to arsenic and manganese, Reno’s water supply was found to contain eight chemicals at levels above EPA health guidelines, including tetrachloroethylene, an industrial solvent and dry cleaning chemical.

7. Riverside County, CA: A 7,200-square-mile area located north of San Diego, Riverside County gets its water from the Bay Delta. Within that water, 13 chemicals were found that exceeded recommended health guidelines.

8. Las Vegas, NV: Fed by the Colorado River, Las Vegas’ water supply contained 12 pollutants exceeding EPA health guidelines, including lead, arsenic, radium-228 and radium-226.

9. Riverside, CA: In addition to the same problems facing county residents, Riverside city residents drink an unusually unhealthy water supply containing 15 chemicals that exceeded health guidelines, along with traces of uranium and bromoform.

1. Pensacola, FL: Situated along the Gulf of Mexico on the Florida Panhandle, Pensacola ranks as having the worst water quality in the country, thanks to 45 total chemicals. Of these, 21 were found at unhealthy amounts, with the worst being lead, benzene, tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, radium-228 and -228. Pensacola’s water was also found to contain chloroform and cyanide.

The best way to ensure that your home’s water is protected from harmful contaminants is with a Pelican Whole House Water Filter. This industry-leading system filters out microorganisms at the point of entry to the home, adding an extra layer of protection against contaminated municipal water supplies.

City of Baltimore Press Release, originally posted on July 2007

BALTIMORE –Baltimore City Public School System CEO Dr. Andrés Alonso announced a system-wide shift to bottled drinking water for students, teachers, staff, and visitors today. The shift is expected to be completed by Friday, November 9. The re-evaluation of the overall policy was prompted by new testing that found several water fountains that had passed previous tests for lead and were permitted to return to use had subsequently failed.

“Parents, students, and teachers prefer the bottled water,” said Dr. Alonso. “Maintenance of the existing water fountains is not worth the expense and concern. It is more cost effective to provide bottled water than to continue to flush, test, and review hundreds of water fountains across the school system each year.”

Recent random testing by the health department found lead levels in water fountains to be much improved from 2003 when all the fountains across the system were shut down. However, despite the school system’s best efforts to maintain the water fountains and to make them fully operational, a small percentage failed to meet the cutoff levels.

The Baltimore City Health Department collected samples of water from working fountains in 10 randomly selected schools, all of which also offered bottled water to students. The laboratory of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene performed the tests.

Of 84 working fountains tested at all 10 schools, 74 had levels of lead below the cutoff level of 20 parts per billion. However, 10 fountains had levels above the cutoff level. The fountains were immediately shut off.

“What concerned us was that the fountains that failed this time around all had previously passed tests, and all had replacement parts,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, Commissioner of Health. “Since our goal is 100 percent confidence, the best approach is to switch to bottled drinking water.”

“We don’t want water fountains to be a distraction to the teaching and learning taking place in the classroom,” said Dr. Alonso. “We want to make sure our children, teachers, and staff have clean water to drink so we can concentrate on education.”

A financial review showed that the cost of bottled drinking water for the school system is expected to be approximately $675,000 per year. By comparison, the school system is paying approximately $350,000 for bottled water in schools without adequate numbers of working fountains, $275,000 for staff and consultants to oversee the testing program, and $50,000 for laboratory analysis. In addition, hundreds of custodians spend time flushing each water fountain every day, and many other school system and health department employees are involved in reviewing and approving results.

In the future, exceptions may be granted on a school-by-school basis, such as for schools that have entirely new piping and fixtures.

 

Summary of Health Department Testing Results

The Health Department conducted testing at all available working fountains at 10 randomly selected schools in October 2007. The testing was performed by the laboratory of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. All 10 schools had at least some bottled water available on site.

• Of 84 drinking fountains tested, the water in 74 fountains (88%) passed the test, with lead levels less than 20 parts per billion. ¾ In 10 fountains (12%) located in four schools, the water failed the test, with the lead content exceeding 20 parts per billion of lead. Five of these fountains had lead levels exceeding 100 parts per billion, with the highest at 655 parts per billion of lead.
• Fountains that tested high for lead were immediately shut off.
• The four schools with at least one fountain that failed the test already had a total of 54 water coolers with bottled drinking in use. An additional 15 coolers were delivered.

Overall, the results were much improved from several years ago. At these 10 schools, after the systemwide shutdown in 2003, 69 fountains had tested high for lead and had never been turned back on.

It is not immediately clear why the 10 fountains tested high for lead. All 10 fountains had replacement parts. All had previously passed the test, under conditions designed to elicit the highest possible results. Eight of the fountains had failed the lead test at some point in the past, followed by normal tests. Two of the 10 fountains had passed all tests since the 2003 shutdown.

• According to experts consulted by the Health Department, one possibility is that even when fountains have been fixed, there can still be problems upstream, such as in the pipes.

Based on the results, and the high cost of further evaluating and remediating the water fountains of the school system, the Health Department recommended a system-wide switch to bottled drinking water. Exemptions in the future could be considered on a school-by-school basis.

• Schools tested without high lead levels: Hampden Elementary (6 pass), Lombard Middle (16 pass), Gardenville Elementary (3 pass), Canton Middle (6 pass), Cross Country Elementary (7 pass), Patterson High (18 pass).
• Schools tested with at least one fountain with high lead level: Northwood Elementary (3 pass, 41, 87), Douglas High School (5 pass, 280, 655), Baltimore City College (1 pass, 267, 410), Carver High School (9 pass, 31, 47, 75, 142)