Sebring-area schools reopen after favorable lead tests

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

SEBRING

Lead levels in water samples taken here have declined in recent days, and schools have reopened after the most-recent favorable test results.

An Ohio Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman said the improvement may have been due to the recent OEPA-ordered resumption of the addition of caustic soda, an anti-corrosive agent, to the village water supply at the water treatment plant.

The village had been using caustic soda as part of its OEPA-approved treatment plan, then stopped the application, said Heidi Griesmer, OEPA’s deputy director of communications.

“They didn’t get permission from us for quitting” that application, Griesmer said, adding that she didn’t know why the village stopped adding caustic soda or the exact times the application began and stopped.

Adding an anti-corrosive agent reduces the leaching of lead and copper from pipes into the water, she explained.

No detectable lead is leaving the village water treatment plant, she said.

“In the main lines, there is no lead piping” in the village water distribution system, Griesmer said.

OEPA believes lead or copper contamination was coming from lead or copper pipes in individual service connections to the village water system or pipes or fixtures within buildings, she added.

SCHOOLS REOPEN TODAY

Sebring schools and the West Branch middle and high schools, which had been closed Monday and Tuesday after elevated lead levels were found in water samples collected from Sebring taps, reopened today.

They reopened after the OEPA reported Tuesday that 121 of 123 water samples OEPA took Sunday evening from Sebring-area schools tested below the 15 parts per billion federal lead action threshold.

The two samples with elevated levels taken Sunday were both from drinking fountains at Sebring High School, which measured 19.6 and 28 ppb, Griesmer said.

Sebring schools Superintendent Toni Viscounte said a sample collected Friday from a high-school drinking fountain registered 36 ppb.

“That is alarming. It’s definitely something we’re going to need to look into,” Viscounte said.

However, Griesmer said that fountain registered only 11 ppb Sunday.

That fountain is in a hallway outside the cafeteria in a wing of the high school that was built in 2002.

Viscounte said she will have her staff thoroughly probe the source of that high reading to determine whether it was caused by components of the fountain or by plumbing leading to it.

“We do believe it could be a problem with the fixture,” Griesmer said of solder or something else in the fountain that may contain lead.

Both fountains that exceeded 15 ppb Sunday have been unplugged, and their water supplies have been shut off, according to the school website. Students are always permitted to bring their own water and hand sanitizer, the school website said.

The school district has purchased several cases of bottled water, Viscounte said. “If we’re going to start shutting off fountains, then I do feel obligated that we provide water,” she said.

WHY SCHOOLS WERE CLOSED

As to why Sebring schools were closed Monday and Tuesday, despite availability of bottled water for drinking and school cafeteria cooking, Viscounte explained that unless adult monitors had been assigned to every school restroom, children could have cupped their hands and drunk potentially contaminated water from the wash basins.

No lead was found in any water at the West Branch schools, Scott Weingart, school superintendent there, reported Tuesday.

At Village Hall, Richard Giroux, village manager, took a phone call from the U.S. attorney shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday, then met with Christopher Harshman, operator of the water treatment plant, and engineers from W.E. Quicksall & Associates of New Philadelphia concerning strategies the village might use to meet the Ohio EPA’s drinking-water system requirements.

The U.S. attorney is the federal prosecutor.

Harshman, who declined to comment after the meeting, became the village’s acting water-treatment-plant superintendent after Giroux placed Jim Bates on paid administrative leave Monday.

Giroux placed Bates on leave after receiving a Monday email from an OEPA official saying Bates had to be removed on an emergency basis as the plant operator of record.

Late Sunday, OEPA Director Craig W. Butler said the state agency had opened an investigation and was seeking a U.S. EPA criminal investigation of Bates, whose wastewater plant operator’s license is facing revocation by the OEPA.

Butler said Bates was not properly performing his duties to protect public health and may have falsified reports.

Bates has emphatically denied falsifying reports.

With the Mahoning River headwaters as its water source and with its treatment plant on Knox School Road, Knox Township, Columbiana County, the Sebring water system serves Sebring, Beloit and parts of Smith and Knox townships.

POTTERY LEAD THEORY

Newly elected village Councilman Jim Cannell, who retired recently after 38 years as village fire chief, said the possibility of a link between the village’s history as a pottery center and lead contamination in the water should be investigated.

“There’s lead all through the town,” he said.

He noted that Sebring once had numerous pottery-producing plants, which used lead in glazes.

“We used to be the pottery center of Ohio,” he said, adding that only two pottery-decorating shops remain in Sebring today.

Cannell also said the village needs state or federal help to clean up the lead-ladened 13-acre site, where the former Royal China plant burned down in 2010 at 15th Street and California Avenue.

If the site is cleaned up, that land could become an industrial park, he said.

Griesmer said she did not know if OEPA’s investigation is pursuing the pottery causation theory or whether any state money is available for the Royal China site cleanup.

The timing of the initial communication of the lead problem in the water to the public last Thursday may be explained by an OEPA violation notice issued to Giroux that day, which said the village failed to provide the required public notification within 60 days after the Sept. 30 end of the monitoring period, during which lead limits were exceeded.

That violation notice ordered Giroux to issue a news release that day and a public education notice to all customers no later than the following day and specified what they must say.