From David Fleishman, Newton’s Superintendent of Schools…
Dear Newton Community,
To ensure the health and safety of all students, staff and visitors to the Newton Public Schools, the City of Newton Department of Public Works, in conjunction with the Health and Human Services Department, recently conducted water quality testing of drinking fountains in all 23 school buildings in Newton. This testing went beyond the state-mandated testing conducted yearly and was done as a precautionary measure to safeguard the health and wellness of all students and staff.
With the exception of Burr Elementary, the samples tested in all of the schools showed lead levels below the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (Mass DEP) safe drinking water standard of 15 micrograms per liter. Specific data and results for all schools will be sent out as soon as they are received and will be posted on the district website. The water is safe to drink in all of these schools. We will continue to monitor the buildings to ensure the water quality moving forward.
At Burr Elementary School, a sample from one drinking fountain found slightly elevated levels of lead (26.6 mcg/L vs.15 mcg/L Mass DEP standard). As a result of this finding, we immediately shut off the water to this drinking fountain and all other drinking fountains at the Burr School. Additional testing was conducted this morning.
When those results are received, we will immediately take action to remediate the issue and eliminate the problem. Until the results are confirmed and the
issue resolved, bottled water will be provided to all students and staff at Burr.
We will provide test results for Burr School once they are received and outline the remediation action plan and the monitoring protocol. For additional resources on lead in drinking water, please see the attached fact sheet from Mass DEP or visit the CDC website at: www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm.
The health and safety of all Newton students and staff is paramount. Every action step will be taken to ensure the ongoing safety of water in our school buildings. Should you have any questions, please contact the Newton Department of Health and Human Services at 617-796-1420.
Sincerely,
David Fleishman
Superintendent of Schools
I’m glad this apparently turned out to be an isolated problem, and I’m certain it will be dealt with appropriately. I am baffled about one thing though. What prompted this round of water testing? The Superintendent wrote… “This testing went beyond the state-mandated testing conducted yearly and was done as a precautionary measure to safeguard the health and wellness of all students and staff.” Something smells a little fishy to me. Why did the School Department decide to do extra testing? How did the water fountain at Burr pass the previous test, then fail this extra test? Yep, fishy!
Yes Mike It is Fishy. Burr School/Pine Street was built on a Dump – why are our Councilors not testing the water in the abutting houses also? The lead did not come from the pipes from the school – so where is it coming from – Could it be the ground??
I believe what prompted this round of testing is actually fallout from the Flint crisis, which prompted testing all across the country. Google “school failed lead test” and you’ll find a lot of results over the past few weeks. The information is confusing though – I’m not sure what “yearly testing” really means. Parents at Burr have been told that the last test was 2010 by some sources, two years ago by others.
Prior to 1986, lead based solder (sometimes in higher ease of flow proportions) was used in copper joints, especially in bubblers and feed tubing. Leaching from joints might be the cause. I would imagine that eventually other free potable water sources in parks and public buildings will be tested as well. As Councilor Fuller asked: ‘When was the last time the Burr drinking fountains were tested?’
to which Lemieux did not have the answer. That should serve as an indication of what the city is not doing, and should be budgeted for.
The situation in Flint has raised awareness about the quality of drinking water throughout the country, but the timeline for this crisis has been very short. Councilor Fuller asked an important question, but not one that I’d expect an answer to be on the tip of Maureen Lemieux’s tongue. Knowing Councilor Fuller as I do, she wasn’t asking a “gotcha” question – that’s not her style.
The school system has acted quickly and has put in place a temporary solution until the cause for the high lead levels is known. Everyone wants the Burr School community and Auburndale to have safe drinking water. Joanne raises an important point – is the drinking water in the abutting homes safe?
I do know that the soil behind the school where the playground is located was tested extensively for contaminants about 10-15 years ago and only typical contamination was found – the kind we’d find in our yards. In an effort to reassure the community, the city decided to place (please correct me if I’m wrong) 16 inches of top soil onto the area where the new playground is sited.
I’d wait for follow-up reports and data before jumping to conclusions. Ultimately, in a situation such as this, the answers will be in the data.
Joanne – I think its nearly impossible that lead could be leeching into the water pipe from ground contaminants, particularly because it was only fountain that had elevated levels. Harry’s theory sounds like a much more likely culprit.
As Jane says we won’t know for sure though until the City digs a bit deeper.
I wonder if the testing might have been prompted by the recent worrisome results from Boston public schools.
Harry is right. Also, it depends when they tested the fountain. First pull of the day will have higher levels since the water sat in the pipe all night. Most of our older homes have either a lead intact pipe or lead solder. Everyone with small kids or pregnant spouse should be replacing the pipe to the house from the street (the city pays for half), and you should run your water until it runs cold which greater reduces the changes of lead solder being a problem. Still worried, get a whole house filter that filters out lead, but you need to change that filter per the schedule.
Lead paint is a real concern as well. And lots of folks who are rehabbing older homes forget that even wood that doesn’t look painted can have a lead base to it. Test if you have young kids.
At last night’s City Council meeting, we were informed that the lead contamination most likely comes from inside the building. Welding with a lead compound was common for many years and is probably the source of the lead. If neighbors of the dumping area are concerned about toxic materials in their homes or water, they should get it tested. But it is far more likely any lead contamination in homes comes from pipes or paint rather than contaminated soil.
Couple of things:
In the initial test in early May, only one water fountain was tested. Yesterday they took samples from all.
In the initial test, 2 samples were taken. Strangely, the second sample, taken after running the water for a period of time, tested higher. That’s really odd.
Thanks Jane- Makes you wonder WHY they put 16 inches of topsoil on the Burr Playground??
As for the City – We all know that area was a Dump – the CITY should be testing the abutters homes for lead. The city knew that area was a dump – why was that land used to build a school and why was the other land sold to build Homes.
With all due respect to our Councilors – who are more concerned about what happens to a Plastic Bag – Maybe you should be concerned about the health of the community who live on Pine Street, Lexington Street and Staniford Street. Many people that I know personally have cancer or have died from cancer and the 5 I personally know of were all neighbors and unrelated to each other ( so there is No genetic component to this)
I hope I am wrong and it is lead from the welding but the CITY should be doing their due diligence and testing ALL the homes in that area.
Joanne, I am not an environmental engineer, but I have litigated environmental class actions and I have been following what has happened in the Flint case. There just isn’t any reason to think that the dump off of Pine Street has anything to do with the contamination of the public water supply. If neighbors are drinking and using well water from the area then they probably have reason for concern, but that is not the case here as far as I know. That just isn’t how lead gets in the water supply.
Where there are clusters of people with certain cancers, environmental contamination is often one of the suspect causes. The Woburn case, which was the basis for the book and movie “A Civil Action,” is a prime example. In that case the town’s water supply was contaminated by chemicals from a tannery. The chemicals migrated from the site in a “plume” that contaminated the ground water from which Woburn draws its water supply. In a case I was involved in, jet fuel from an Air Force base spread into a plume that contaminated hundreds of people’s wells. The remedy, which the US Government paid for, was to connect everyone affected to the town water supply, which came from an uncontaminated source. By contrast, Newton gets its water from the Quabbin Reservoir through the MWRA, not from ground water that could be affected by the Pine Street dump.
If I thought that there were a risk that neighbors were drinking water contaminated by chemicals from the Pine Street dumpy, I would be the first to say the city should be testing the water supply in all of those homes. Just like I advocated for testing for PCBs and asbestos at the Aquinas School before the city bought it, both of which were found on the site.
I’m confident this water fountain issue is now being dealt with appropriately. That being said, what really interests me is the Superintendent’s trustworthiness, which we’ve had good reason to question in recent times. The Superintendent’s letter [above] suggests that the State requires yearly water testing, and implies the School Department had done that testing. But as Harry Sanders points out in his post, it’s far from clear when the School Department had previously tested the water. So, was the Superintendent being truthful or simply giving us more spin when he wrote…
“This testing went beyond the state-mandated testing conducted yearly and was done as a precautionary measure to safeguard the health and wellness of all students and staff.”
In order for that statement to be truthful, the Superintendent would have had to know the date of the previous test. Yet, there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding when [and even if] those tests took place. I think it would be in everyone’s best interest for the School Department to release the previous test report. If they can’t produce a report that shows the School Department remained in compliance with the annual testing required by the State, it raises some very serious questions.
Wasn’t there an issue very recently in Boston similar to this? That very well may been an impetus to to do added testing in Newton?
Just to be clear… My question is not whether they “added” testing. My question is, had they previously done the annual testing mandated by the State, as the Superintendent’s letter implies? I’d like to see the previous test result on the Burr fountain. I have a hard time believing that fountain passed a test for lead within 12 months of this recent test.
Saw this on Twitter last night from Council meeting: @JDameTAB: Burr’s water as last tested in 2010 and found to be safe, according to CAO Dori Zaleznik. #NewtonMA
Also – they don’t test every school every year. They test every year, a couple of schools each year.
From a recent Globe article – “Mass. earmarks $2 million to test for lead in public schools’ water”:
“Massachusetts law requires each public water system (each town and city typically has its own system) to periodically collect samples from at least two water sources inside at least two schools or early education facilities, selected on a rotating basis. The testing periods vary from every six months to every three years.”
2010? So that fountain hadn’t been tested in six years? If that’s the case, the Superintendent’s letter was deliberately misleading, as it implies it was tested annually. Time for a new Superintendent!
I don’t know about that. Water depts around the state all follow this same yearly protocol of testing 2 schools. We’re all finding out now that’s not enough – hence the $2M inititative by the Governor referenced in the article above.
per state regs, discretionary municipal testing of at least 2 schools built post 1986 will potentially skew the H2O quality monitoring. Trust in the administration’s honesty & integrity, unfortunately the mayor is out of town.
Newton Tab’s website has a new article about the water at Burr and it is no better.
I wonder how long it will take the City to start looking at the fact that Burr was built on a dump and that it most likely has contaminants in the ground leaching into the water system?? Did they test the abutters water yet?? That might help to pin point where the problem is.
Here is the link to the Newton Tab story
http://newton.wickedlocal.com/news/20160524/second-round-of-tests-show-widespread-lead-issues-at-newtons-burr-school
“A second round of water testing last week found elevated lead levels in five of seven water fountains at Burr Elementary School. The new results show lead concentrations higher than those detected in the original tests, which last Tuesday prompted officials to shut off water service to the school’s fountains.”
Joanne- The city tested the soil thoroughly about 12 years ago. It cost $45,000 and found nothing of concern in the soil.
And what was the concern/reason that they tested the soil 12 years ago?
Because Burr was built in the area of several city dumps/work areas? It may have been around the time the “old” playground was put in, about 20 years ago, and so was related to what might be uncovered by digging. I know that when we did the new playground last year, we had to remove and replace a significant amount of existing topsoil with new – just part of the process, not unique to Burr as far as I know.
We won’t know for sure until the next round of testing is done (testing water at various points in the system before it reaches fountains) but the fact that some fountains test fine on first draw probably points more to an “inside the building” contamination rather than contaminated water coming in.
And for the record, the school building is actually located on former housing lots. The city-used area was in the back, where the fields are now; if you look at old maps, you can see that area was “Flowed Meadow” (wetlands), surrounded by housing, up through at least the 1930s, so it’s essentially all fill back there (which is why it can’t be built on.) I don’t know when the city started using it or for what purpose – the old “burning dump” was down the street and is still closed off.
Oh, dear, how time flies. The testing was done 20 years ago to dispel persistent rumors about contaminated soil behind the school before the first playground was built. As I mentioned, the testing was extensive and no contaminants were found.
So the third round of water testing at Burr was even worse. They tested samples directly from 6 pipes after removing the fountains. The first draw lead levels ranged from 261PBB to 7600PBB. (EPA actionable level is > 15 PPB) After 2 minutes of flushing, five locations passed, but one was still high. So no answers yet, more testing needed.