A recent sunrise saw Joe Centeno, a maintenance plumber with Jefferson County schools, already busy at work at Arvada's Peck Elementary, changing out water cutoffs, connector lines and fixtures in hopes of improving the water quality.
The district's effort to test water outlets at all 158 schools for high lead levels found 10 elevated level sites at the 50-year-old school --; a sink in the teachers' lounge, three sinks in the kitchen and six classroom sinks, some of which had bubbler drinking attachments.
"This is the guinea pig," Centeno said. "We'll see if this works."
His best guess as a plumber was that the repairs should fix the problem, based on the scattered lead readings, as opposed to schoolwide contamination that would have required more extensive and expensive replumbing.
Since a Jeffco schools building in Arvada used as a Head Start preschool reported high lead readings in April, the school district has set out to test all schools over the summer. It began with the oldest facilities, built long before the EPA raised the standards in1986on how much of the heavy metal could safely be in the water supply. So far, results on the first 32 school buildings have found elevated levels of lead at 23 of them.
The newest schools to test high include Foothills Elementary in Lakewood and Welchester Elementary in the Golden/Lakewood area.
At Foothills, two classroom sink drinking fountain bubblers tested high, along with a sink in the art room and cafeteria. At Welchester, eight classroom sinks and one sink in the library tested high. Two of those sinks tested over 100 parts per billion. The EPA guidelines call for water to test below 15 parts per billion and warns that there is no known safe level of lead in drinking water.
Local schools that have tested within safety levels for lead include Hutchinson Elementary in Lakewood and Kendalvue Elementary in Morrison. (For a list of school testing results to date, go to www.jeffcopublicschools.org.)
At Peck, Centeno spent about an hour at each trouble spot. A total of $1,500 worth of parts had been purchased to hopefully fix the problems. The district will retest the faucets and water fountains around the school this week to see how effective the process has been.
Centeno is confident the issue will be fixed. "In my experience," he said, "they (Jeffco schools) don't cut corners."
Assuming the repairs at Peck work, the district will "do as many replacements as possible before school starts," district spokeswoman Diana Wilson said.
Wilson cautioned that even with outside contract work, some faucets and schools could still be marked unusable when students return to classes in the fall.
With the exception of one other school, where a wall might need to be torn into to fix a line of drinking fountains, Wilson was hopeful that the kind of work done at Peck would solve most issues, without greater expense.
Still, initial testing alone will cost $75,000. Wilson said the repair cost would be absorbed by the district's facilities budget, at the expense of other items like new carpet, paint and furniture.
"Public safety has to come first," she said.
from Lakewood Sentinel - Latest Stories http://lakewoodsentinel.com/stories/Lead-abatement-begins,228909
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