43
Champion schools making adjustments to eliminate lead
By Ed Runyan
CHAMPION
A second Trumbull County school system – Champion – has received results back from water testing done by the Trumbull County Board of Health and is making adjustments to eliminate lead.
Pam Hood, Champion superintendent, said all of the water fountains throughout the district’s three buildings tested OK, but three seldom-used sinks had readings high enough that they were taken off-line.
All three sinks tested above the 15 parts-per-billion level considered safe by the federal government, but all three were within the safe range after the water was “flushed” for a couple minutes.
Those three locations were a sink in the kitchen at Central Elemetary, the art room at the high school and the former home-economics classroom at the middle school.
A fourth location where the reading was higher than 15 ppb was the service main for the high school, which produced an acceptable level after it was flushed, Hood said.
The Trumbull County Health Department advised the school system to flush that location for three to five minutes every morning, so the school district has flushed it for five minutes each morning, Hood said.
The school district doesn’t want to have to flush any of its water on a regular basis and is working with the health department to find a permanent answer. Hood said one theory is that copper fittings at that location are responsible and need to be replaced.
Through guidance from the health department, the first locations tested were those where water was consumed and locations where the water isn’t used very often.
Such locations are the most likely to have elevated lead levels because the lead usually comes from being leached out of plumbing or pipes where water sits, officials have said.
The district still has 13 more locations within the district’s three buildings to sample in the coming weeks, Hood said. All results should be known by mid-March to late March, she said.
The school district has been using all of its communications services – parent emails, the school district Facebook page, its home page and a system just for families in the district – to notify them of what the district has been doing, Hood said.
In addition to being seldom-used, the faucets that have tested high have all had aerators on them, Hood said. She has learned that aerators can raise lead readings by trapping lead in the screen of the device.
On Friday, the superintendent of LaBrae schools said that district had found some lead readings between 5 ppb and 15 ppb in its Bascom Elementary School but was taking steps to flush the water, which brought all of the readings down to an acceptable level.
The superintendent of Newton Falls Village Schools said the test results the school district received Friday were “good.”
The board of health gave a presentation to Trumbull County superintendents Feb. 4 to advise them that proactive testing at their schools would be advisable because state officials have indicated that they may add testing requirements at schools and other locations as a result of finding elevated lead readings at schools and homes in Sebring.