SEATTLE — Two public elementary schools in Tacoma found high levels of lead in their drinking water in May, but the Tacoma Public School District only announced the results and informed parents Monday.
The district blocked off drinking fountains and ordered bottled water at the schools, where up to 116 times the accepted levels of lead were found at one facility. An audit of all past water quality tests at every school is planned.
Dan Voelpel, a district spokesman, said the district is investigating why there was no action after the tests were first taken.
“We know they were overlooked for some reason,” he said.
Voelpel also said Monday that the district’s safety and environmental health manager was placed on paid administrative leave as a result of the discovery.
District officials on Friday night reviewed the past tests that found “higher than accepted” levels of lead at Mann and Reed elementary schools, according to Dave Wilkins, another district spokesman.
In a statement Monday, the district said 59 drinking sources tested at Reed Elementary school had lead levels ranging from five parts per billion (ppb) to 2330 ppb, and 39 had lead levels above 20 ppb, the district safety standard.
At Mann Elementary, 69 water sources were found to have lead levels up to 784 ppb, while 23 locations were above 20 ppb.
“These are internal locations that someone could potentially drink from,” Voelpel said.
The announcement came as Tacoma Water officials reported drinking water with high levels of lead in several homes last week that they attributed to old lead “gooseneck” connector pipes leading into as many as 1,700 houses.
Voelpel said the elementary schools do not have gooseneck piping and the district has not figured out why lead levels are so high.
Leslie Cooley, treasurer of the Parent Teacher Association at Reed, said the group will be asking further questions of the district and added the test results worried her.
“It bothers me that they knew about it for a year and didn’t do anything,” she said.
Mann and Reed have more minority students than the district average and more students eligible for free or reduced price lunches.
“Clearly, what’s occurred here will require us to revisit our system for testing the water quality at all of our locations and how we report maintain and communicate that info in the future,” Voelpel said.
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