The news of lead in six Battle Ground Public Schools campuses could just be the beginning of bad news from the district.
The district announced late on Monday that lab tests showed elevated levels of lead in fixtures on six district campuses: Amboy Middle School, Captain Strong Primary School, Chief Umtuch Middle School, Maple Grove School, Yacolt Primary School and the Lewisville campus administrative office. But only limited details were available until Tuesday, leaving some parents frustrated with the apparent lack of immediate information about what water sources were affected and how severely.
Superintendent Mark Hottowe said the spotlight is turned on the district because of the sheer volume of samples the district submitted: one for every water source for a total of 2,100 samples from the district’s 19 facilities.
“I do know that some folks are concerned, but I would go back to what I said in the beginning,” he said Tuesday. “We’re the only district that did 2,100 tests. The attention you’re giving us at this moment probably would not be here” if the district had tested fewer samples.
Hottowe said bathroom sinks, faucets and water fountains were all affected, and district spokeswoman Rita Sanders said results in general ranged from 15.1 to 85 parts per billion.
Two outlying sink faucets tested far higher, she said. A Lewisville sink faucet tested at 107 parts per billion, while an Amboy faucet tested at 155 parts per billion — 10 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended lead limit of 15 parts per billion.
The district has turned those faucets off for now, but officials plan to post “do not drink” signs on faucets and turn them back on for students to use to wash their hands later this week. Affected fixtures will be replaced.
“We have a lot of work yet to come,” Hottowe said.
The district is also providing bottled water at schools for students to drink.
“We will provide water for their children,” Hottowe said. “We are doing that as we speak.”
Lab backlogged
Battle Ground Public Schools’ announcement of lead in its schools comes weeks after similar news reported by The Columbian from Evergreen Public Schools, the Camas School District and the Ridgefield School District. While other districts had the opportunity to address the issue while students were out for the summer, Battle Ground schools are having to tackle replacing fixtures while students are in class. Apex Laboratories in Portland, which has been backlogged with tests all summer, has only tested about 20 percent of the samples, the district noted.
“We did not choose to pick a few samples” like other districts, Hottowe said. “That makes for a huge process.”
At this rate, that means more schools are likely to test positive for lead. The district first submitted its samples to Apex in the spring after increasing pressure following the discovery of lead in a number of Portland Public Schools. Since then, the lab hasn’t been able to provide an accurate time line of when results may be released.
But Hottowe said the district won’t be shutting down fountains or distributing bottled water at other schools until it receives word of lead at those locations. Without more information, there’s no way to know which fixtures to shut down, the superintendent said.
“We really cannot do anything to be proactive,” Hottowe said. “We can only be reactive to the information that we receive.”
