Elevated lead levels in drinking water at Oakland schools sparks outrage

KPIX

By Amanda Hari

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    OAKLAND, California (KPIX) — Oakland Unified School District parents and school staff are speaking out after elevated lead levels were found in drinking water at multiple schools across the district.

In one case, a water fountain had ten times the amount of allowable lead levels.

A notice was sent out to families this week, but some of the testing happened months ago, with students and staff have been drinking the water during the summer school sessions.

Now some people, like 6th grade teacher at Frink United Academy of Language Stuard Loebl, are concerned about the impact of lead consumption, which includes learning difficulties, blood disorders and behavioral problems.

“I have it right here. This is a report released in April,” said Loebl.

He says he’s outraged and heartbroken by the results from the environmental testing.

“So students have been drinking lead water this whole time; obviously before the report was released but since as well, which is infuriating,” said Loebl.

Loebl claims one water fountain had lead levels of 51 parts per billion. OUSD ‘s maximum acceptable amout of lead is just five parts per billion. The environmental protection agency recommends remediation if levels exceed 15.

“It will be really difficult for them to know exactly what the impact is,” said Loebl about when or how they will know if anyone has been poisoned by the lead. “Figuring that out will be a decades-long process potentially, and it’s horrible.”

The water fountains at Frick have been covered to prevent more exposure.

Nate Landry’s daughter is in the 6th grade at Edna Brewer Middle School, one of the other schools with elevated lead levels.

“Students and their families and staff should be able to come to school and expect safe drinking water,” said Landry.

He believes the district may need to re-evaluate how they are spending money so they can best serve the students.

“OUSD has commited 60 million dollars in facilities bond money to a new central office,” said Landry. “t just so happens that we were quoted 60 million dollars would be the estimated price for remediating the lead contamient situation in the district.”

A teacher from United for Success Academy says there has been a lead crisis at that school for a number of years. She says students tested the water and soil during the 2017-18 school year and found elevated lead levels.

Those issues with lead levels came up at McClymond’s High School, which led to wider testing by the East Bay Municipal Utility District in November of 2017. Families were told that situation was fixed. Then in 2022 another student test found lead in the soil again.

Photos from United for Success Academy show that their water fountains were still uncovered and functional on Saturday.

Loebl says the district needs to shutdown all drinking fountains, fix the issue, and prevent it from ever happening again.

“We need a very comprehensive plan for testing going forward that does not just spot test,” said Loebl.

More testing is being done on the drinking water at schools throughout the district, the number of schools impacted by elevated lead levels could still increase.

The Oakland Unified School District released the following statement through district spokesperson John Sasaki:

“Over the past several months, our Risk Management team has been aggressively testing water fixtures in schools. In that process, they identified some outlets that showed elevated levels of lead, most of which fell between our Board of Education-required limit of 5 parts per billion (ppb) and the state and federal limit of 15 ppb. The elevated fixtures have been taken out of service. Every campus has numerous other fixtures where the water tested under the Board limit. Also, we know that students and staff largely consume water that comes from our FloWater water dispensers or similar machines, which are in all schools, and are equipped with extra filtering. We are in the process of repairing the elevated outlets – which most often involves simply replacing a filter – and then retesting the outlets before bringing them back on line. While being very proactive in doing this testing, we were not as effective in communicating with everyone involved. We are putting systems in place to ensure a lack of effective communication does not occur again.”

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