OAKLAND — In the year-and-a-half after concerns over McClymonds High School’s water quality surfaced, Oakland Unified has undergone a districtwide overhaul of its drinkable water taps.
In the past seven months, the district has tested taps at most of its aging schools, childhood development centers and Oakland charter schools to find that 22 Oakland schools in addition to McClymonds had at least one tap with lead levels above federal and state standards, according to the district’s website. Those taps were taken out of service and many have either been replaced or fixed.
Public outcry over the lead contamination prompted the school board to adopt a “Clean Drinking Water Policy” on Feb. 28. It requires the district to replace or fix taps at schools and early childhood centers that contain lead levels higher than 5 parts per billion — going beyond state and federal guidelines deeming taps with lead levels higher than 15 parts per billion as dangerous to children.
Parents, teachers, students and residents have been pressuring the school board to do more to address the water quality since August 2016, when the issue at McClymonds was brought to the district’s attention. Oakland Unified spokesman John Sasaki said the district has since spent a large sum of money and its staff has spent a lot of time testing, fixing and replacing taps.
“I can’t sleep at night knowing that this is something that we need to remedy,” said school board director Nina Senn at the Feb.28 meeting. “At the same, I also feel very comfortable that our staff has been working very hard with our community partners and with our board to address this situation.”
McClymonds staff told the district’s buildings and grounds department about concerns over the “water purity” of the showers in the boys and girls locker rooms in August 2016, according to a timeline on the district’s website. Sasaki said the football team was filling up water tanks with water from the showers for practice, and finding sediment.
Water samples were taken from the 103-year-old school and sent to a lab for testing, and school staff was informed to stop using the shower water as drinking water. Sasaki said the showers weren’t really being used otherwise.
The test results showed high levels of lead, and prompted staff to take additional samples from drinking fountains in the locker rooms and in the main building. The results of those tests showed lead levels under 15 parts per billion, but since traces of sediment were found in the water due to deterioration of the galvanized pipes, the pipes were flushed.
Members of the public — namely former basketball coach Ben Tapscott — urged district officials to do more, and in November 2016, drinking water samples were taken from the men’s and women’s restrooms on the football field. One of the water fountains was found to have high lead levels, the district’s website said. The fountain was taken out of commission.
District staff continued to test sinks, faucets and fountains at the school, closing off taps that tested high for lead.
Apart from lead contamination, fountains on the football field were found to contain sediment, which led to some repair and eventually a new water line from the main to bypass the old piping.
In September 2017, Oakland Unified started testing the water quality at its schools as well as child development centers and some Oakland charter schools. As officials would find taps that had high lead levels, they would take the fixtures out of commission and notify parents of students.
The Centro Infantil child development center in the Oak Tree neighborhood was found to contain one tap with 256.4 parts per billion of lead in November, the district’s website said. The Santa Fe Elementary School site where Glenview Elementary is operating out of in North Oakland had a tap with 60 parts per billion of lead.
The district has encouraged parents concerned about the lead to have their children tested by their doctor. Children without insurance can be screened at school-based health centers.
In the fall, East Bay Municipal Utility District began conducting a second round of testing on the schools under a state Water Resources Control Board program. That testing was able to detect almost any amount of lead in water, while the district’s testing only detecting amounts more than 5 parts per billion.
Throughout the process, advocates had been urging the district to adopt a policy to ensure testing continues and contaminated fixtures are dealt with. They had also been urging the district to test all taps at schools — the district and EBMUD had only been testing certain taps — and to replace or fix taps that contained more than 1 part per billion of lead. The American Academy of Pediatrics has deemed fixtures with lead levels higher than that to be dangerous for children.
Berkeley Unified’s drinking water policy goes to that length, said Emily Rusch, executive director of consumer group CalPIRG. Rusch said she had hoped Oakland Unified’s policy would have done the same.
“Oakland is doing more testing than what’s required by the law, and they’re doing more remediation than what’s required by the law, but there’s so much more we could be doing to make the gold standard,” Rusch said in an interview.
Oakland Unified will review the policy in 2019 to consider extending it to mitigate water taps that have lead levels of more than 1 part per billion.
“From a practical and cost standpoint, it’s just not feasible to do all of that right now, because there is a lot of cost there, and we have limited staff to replace all the things that we would need to replace,” Sasaki said.
A consulting firm estimated the cost to sample, test and replace all fixtures at Oakland Unified schools, and to replace water lines and pipes over the next five years, would be $38 million. Sasaki said that’s a “worst case scenario,” and that the cost would likely be much less than that.
The policy also requires schools to close access to taps found to contain more than 5 parts per billion of lead within 24 hours of receiving the test results.The school will also have to test all other fixtures at a site where a tap with more than 5 parts per billion of lead is found. If a tap is found to contain more than 5 parts per billion of lead, the superintendent must notify teachers, parents and faculty within one business day.
Under the policy, all drinking water taps at Oakland schools will be tested, said Oakland Unified risk management officer Rebecca Littlejohn.
“For all practical purposes, what this says is that anything we’ve found between 5 and 15 parts per billion, we’re going to have to replace,” Sasaki said. “We’ve already started mitigating some of that anyway, because we want to make sure kids are as safe as possible.”