Lead contamination at other schools a ‘wake-up call’: Lawmakers consider testing water at local schools

With some schools in the region reporting dangerously high levels of lead in their drinking water, lawmakers and school officials are taking steps to ensure that local schools have also not been contaminated.

Recent reports have revealed that lead-based water pipes in school buildings have contaminated the drinking water in hundreds of schools across the country, including two in upstate New York.

Even low levels of lead in children has been shown to damage brain development, cause behavioral problems, impair hearing and affect other major organs in the body, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lead testing is not required on either the state or federal level, but Long Island schools could receive federal grants to test their water for lead under a new bill proposed by Senator Charles Schumer.

Schumer called the recent reports of lead contamination in regional schools a “wake-up call.”

“The effects of lead poisoning on our children’s bodies and brains is catastrophic and irreversible,” Schumer said as he announced the legislation yesterday. “Every drop of water that comes from a school’s faucet or fountain should be pure, safe and clean, and this legislation helps make that goal crystal clear.”

Riverhead Central School District has not tested its drinking water for lead and is currently evaluating the cost of such testing, School Superintendent Nancy Carney said Monday.

“There is no obligation or recommendation for schools to test water,” she noted, adding: “The potential of lead exposure for children is lead paint and dust.”

Carney said water in all but one of Riverhead’s school buildings is supplied by the Riverhead Water District, with the exception being Phillips Avenue Elementary School, which is served by the Suffolk County Water Authority.  The water supply is tested regularly by both of those authorities, she said.

But lead contamination from lead-based pipes inside school buildings is the concern, since those pipes were not banned by the federal government until 1986, Schumer pointed out in a press release yesterday. Schools with pipes that date back before 1986 may be in danger of lead contamination.

All of the Riverhead school district’s buildings were built prior to 1986.

Schumer wants to make $100 million in federal funding available for New York schools to use to test their drinking water.

“Right now there is a yawning gap in our lead-testing protocols: at the federal level we do not require or, more importantly, support lead testing in schools,” he said.