Testing throughout Berkeley Unified School District detected elevated lead levels in one water fountain at Willard Middle School.
BUSD released the results of the tests, conducted by the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) at all 20 schools in December, today.
The state requires districts to take any water sources testing above 15 ppb out of service.
Districts must also notify families about the high lead levels and further investigate the water fixture in question as well as the water entry point at the school.
A new BUSD webpage on water quality says the district plans to spend the next 10 months determining the source of contamination at all schools where the lead was detected, testing similar water sources at the schools and remediating the contaminated fixtures.
BUSD had EBMUD conduct these mandated tests early on, in December 2017, but did not take advantage of a previous, January 2017 law that would have required the utility to test schools at the request of the district.
“As a result, we have been pleased to find that preliminary results are quite encouraging.” Berkeleyside has asked the district for further comment on the overall results and the Willard findings.
Several Oakland and San Francisco schools have recently detected toxic levels of lead in their water, in one case finding a fixture contaminated with 860 ppb of lead.
BUSD also previously conducted preliminary tests with a private consultant at some of its schools, when concerns about water quality were raised at those sites.
Those tests did not detect any lead, though Berkeleyside readers pointed out that the consultant used an outdated method that does not detect lead quantities below 50 ppb.