AMHERST — Water fountains and faucets at six school buildings used by the Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools continue to be repaired and replaced after samples of water taken from them revealed elevated levels of lead.
But even as more than 150 fixtures get swapped out, and the water from them gets retested as part of a voluntary state program called the Assistance Program for Lead in School Drinking Water, there is no evidence that the drinking water was posing a risk to children and staff in the buildings.
Using the protocols of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead Contamination Control Act, all of the samples tested are of water that has remained in pipes overnight, for between eight and 18 hours.
While many of these exceeded the EPA’s 15 parts per billion action level for lead, and none exceeded the copper action level of 1.3 parts per million, almost all of these water outlets had negative tests for lead when water ran for 30 seconds.
“We’ve done really well,” said Health and Community Services Director Julie Federman. “After the 30-second flush, a majority of our fixtures came back fine.”
The six schools in Amherst are among around 800 buildings, in cities and towns across the state, where water is being drawn and tested in commercial laboratories under the supervision of water experts at the University of Massachusetts, in a program funded by $2 million from the Massachusetts Clean Water Trust.
John Tobiason, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Massachusetts and the lead principal investigator, said Massachusetts is out in front on the issue of ensuring drinking water is safe.
The voluntary state program, Tobiason said, allows officials to identify and remove plumbing fixtures that may be leaching lead or copper into drinking water. But the program he is overseeing is not designed to have more significant actions, such as replacing pipes that may be a source of lead.
All testing follows the protocols of the voluntary Lead Contamination Control Act, or LCCA, including how much water to draw and how to take the samples.
The fact that the state testing program for schools is voluntary is a concern for Shutesbury resident Michael Hootstein,
“The trouble with this whole issue is we have absolutely no federal or state laws regulating how much lead there can be in school drinking water,” said Hootstein, a retired hydrogeologist who added that he has represented the public interest and citizens for 25 years.
On Jan. 11, Hootstein sent a letter to school officials, and the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee, making the case that the experience in Amherst schools shows its water samples are more contaminated than the water in Flint, Michigan. Flint is the site of an ongoing lead contamination issue that exposed thousands of children to high levels of lead, and may have sickened them, with possible brain, kidney and nervous system impacts.
“It is morally wrong and extremely costly, irresponsible and child-endangering for the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee to continue to turn a blind eye to the intentional lead-poisoning of our children, teachers and staff,” Hootsein wrote.
But Tobiason said Hootstein is comparing apples and oranges, in part because the water testing at the schools is taking different measurements from those in a community where serious compliance monitoring occurs.
“You can’t compare the numerical results for compliance samples with LCCA sampling,” Tobiason said. “You can’t combine them in any way that makes any scientific sense.”
A bill pending in the state Legislature, called The Safe Drinking Water at School Act, would take a variety of steps to supplement the voluntary program, including more regular testing, replacing water lines and mandating filters on outlets that have high lead levels.
Federman said children under 6 and pregnant women are most susceptible to lead poisoning, and the water consumed at schools is likely to be just a minor portion of any lead intake, with lead in paint and soils, often found in the homes in which children are living in, causing more problems.
“It’s one small aspect of how we might get lead into our bodies,” Federman said. “By reducing exposure in schools, we’re reducing their exposure even more.”
Federman said there is no empirical evidence to support that lead is a problem in Amherst, pointing to statistics that show for children under 72 months with elevated lead levels, Amherst sees just 13.9 cases per 1,000 children, compared to the state average of 19.6 cases per 1,000 children.
For the Amherst schools, there has been extensive work at fixing problems with fixtures and faucets. All of the needed repairs have been made, with the most at Fort River and Wildwood schools, though not all have been retested.
After getting the first test results in late summer, Federman said she and others did outreach to inform the community.
“Our water supply is safe, we have great water in Amherst,” Federman said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.