El Paso County parents may not have as much to worry about their kids drinking water with lead at school these days, but the complete removal of lead in public schools remains ongoing nearly a year later after the process started.

Under state law passed in 2022, all Colorado public schools grades K-5, early child care facilities and family child care homes were required to test all their drinking water fixtures for lead concentration and to submit their results to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment (CDPHE) by May 31, 2023.

The Environmental Protection Agency, American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all agree that there is no safe amount of lead in a child’s blood, with lead exposure being linked to numerous health problems, including damage to the central and peripheral nervous system, learning disabilities, impaired hearing and growth disruption.

“Clean, lead-free drinking water in schools and child care centers cuts down the risk of dangerous, lifelong impacts to children’s health and well-being,” said Rep. Emily Sirota, D-Denver, who sponsored the testing bill that became law.

Despite these risks for children, the EPA has set the minimum lead requirement for all public drinking water fixtures at 15 micrograms per liter or parts per billion (ppb), while the Food and Drug Administration set the minimum for bottled water at 5 ppb. A part per billion is proportionate to a single drop of water in a 10-million-gallon tank.

In Colorado, if any samples show lead concentrations at or above 5 ppb, the school or child care center must notify all employees, parents and guardians, cease use of the water source and begin its remediation.

The law also created statewide standards and procedures regarding testing, maintenance, protocols, recording and reporting all actions pertaining to clean drinking water.

According to the most recent data submitted to the CDPHE, all El Paso County public school districts have complied with the law with 4,200 total drinking sources tested and submitted to the state by the deadline, but the work is far from complete.

Across the county’s 15 school districts, 300 drinking sources recorded excessive amounts of lead in their water samples. Out of those fixtures, the progress for 268 of them is listed as “underway” or “further fixes underway” on the state’s website as of March 11, despite some of the samples getting submitted over a year ago. If a fixture’s initial and follow-up test records excessive ppb, it is immediately shut off and taken out of service.

School districts D20, D2, D12 and D38 are among those who have shut off multiple fixtures with lead in their water with remediation work still ongoing. Fixtures with some of the highest amounts of lead have included a kitchen faucet yielding 130 ppb at Manitou Springs Elementary School, 280 ppb at a High Plains Elementary gym water fountain and 3,500 ppb at a kitchen faucet in Doherty High School.

D8 is the only district to have completely fixed or replaced all their dangerous water sources to date, with 23 fixtures testing for excessive amounts of lead.

In addition to setting the state requirements and providing  the schools with the needed funding, the CDPHE also works with the individual schools to help them develop their own remediation plans.

Funding for the testing and remediation efforts comes from the state’s general fund at $21 million, with the average cost for remediation at each school estimated to be $2,100. Nichole Rowan, director of CDPHE’s Water Quality Control Division, says the available funding has been sufficient thus far.

“It does really vary from school to school or even fixture to fixture, of what that cost is, depending on the fix,” she said.

The law also requires that all 6-8 grade public schools follow this same process starting Sept. 2023 with a Nov. 2024 deadline. It does not require public schools grade 9-12 to conduct these tests nor to keep records like the other facilities.

Rowan said this was to prioritize the health of the youngest students who are impacted by lead greater than older kids and young adults.

“Once we focus on that, we can determine next steps,” she said.

‘We’ve been slow-playing this’

Nationwide standards for lead and other contaminants in public water fixtures have been in place for 50 years while the Lead and Copper Rule began regular testing and treatment in 1991, but legislation to specifically reduce child lead exposure in drinking water has only begun passing in individual states in recent years. Colorado introduced a state grant program in 2017 to fund testing for its public schools until 2020, though it wasn’t widely utilized.

Public health advocate Alexandra Simon with the Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG) was among those who lobbied during the 2022 session for HB22-1358 and said while the bill’s passage into law is a good first step, there are still ways it could be better.

“We’ve known it’s really toxic to kids and we’ve been slow-playing this for a while now,” she said.

Simon said lowering the minimum level of lead permitted is one of the ways the law could be improved. In addition to higher total funding, CoPIRG also advocated for the lead limit be set at the AAP’s recommended 1 ppb threshold and the installation of certified water filters for every drinking source across the state.

Simon admitted that these requirements would have made it more difficult for every school and child care facility to adhere to and likely would have proved to be too costly and stringent to get signed into law.

“You have to be pragmatic in order to enact incremental change,” she said.

‘Can’t just one-and-done it’

The current processes for acceptable remediation can vary, depending on the type of fixture or the concentration of lead that’s detected, with corrective actions ranging from flushing out pipes to installing a filter, removing or replacing entire fixtures to simply placing signs over them.

Although the law requires that every drinking source be tested by a certain date, there’s no set date to turn the fixture back on if it was shut off. One reason that much of the remediation work has yet to be done is that many districts are waiting on funding to get approved by the state.

Academy District 20 spokesperson Krystal Story told The Gazette in an email that the process of turning fixtures back on can be a long process since schools are required to wait for next steps from CDPHE, which can take as long as two or three months.

“Following their process and guidance ensures D20 is compliant with state requirements and reimbursed for our remedial action,” she wrote. “As part of the water testing process, D20 has made the decision to replace all fixtures that failed the first draw test regardless of the flush test results. All fixtures that failed the first draw test have been shut off until final approval from CDPHE is given to turn them on.”

For example, if a drinking source tested too high for lead, its aerator would get cleaned and it would be tested again. If the lead level is still high, approval is then needed to replace the faucet before being tested again.  If the results are still too high, then one could seek approval to replace the nearby piping or the closest shut off valve and test again. Since this work is funded by the CDPHE, the schools are required to wait for approval before completing these repairs and retesting.

Labor and material shortages for certain fixes, contracting issues, sampling delays and competing priorities like the implementation of the universal preschool program the same year have been mentioned as other reasons for delays in complete remediation. Rather than simply adhere to the law, advocacy groups like CoPIRG have suggested more proactive measures.

“We encourage the districts to act more boldly when it comes to remediation and getting the lead out of our children’s water,” Simon said.

Some districts have already opted for this ahead of the law’s passage.

District 11 began their own water testing and remediation process years earlier upon receiving recommendations by Colorado Springs Utilities. Beyond just complying with the law, the district has replaced most of its lead-heavy fixtures in its elementary schools and begun addressing fixtures in its middle schools and high schools. D11 capital program manager Jennifer Hotaling said while it’s great that water testing and remediation is now required and funded by the state, they were ultimately more efficient by implementing their own plan.

“This methodical step-by-step process makes sense if you have the time,” she said of the state’s approach. “Our executive leadership, believed following this exact process would be inefficient and difficult to implement with potential negative impacts to the elementary schools.”

To save time and resources, the district’s plumbing and electrical shops replaced multiple water systems simultaneously with capital program funding predominately. The district opted for this approach to reduce the total time for drinking sources to be out of service while school was in session. They are currently in the process of submitting water samples to get reimbursement from the state for lab testing and remediation costs where possible, but Hotaling acknowledged that it’s not a guarantee since they opted for this immediate action.

“D11 believed the cost of this choice was minor compared to the greater benefit of safer drinking water sources for our students, staff and community,” she said.

Last Fall, the window opened for Colorado middle schools to begin their testing and remediation with a deadline set at the end of November. The funding for this testing will come from what remains of the $21 million that was approved.

As it is currently written in law, the testing and remediation procedures don’t have any plans or funding beyond this deadline. The hope is that, once all the needed fixtures meet requirements, any future detections will be through the annual water sampling tests mandated by the state. As far as any further funding for these tests and fixes, or for high school fixtures going forward, there’s no guarantee.

“The goal is to prioritize the most vulnerable populations first,” Rowan said. “But if funds remain after we can serve that population, high schools may become part of the equation in the future.”

In a December 2023 legislative report submitted by CDPHE, outreach and education was highlighted as one of the major steps towards lead reduction accomplished in the first year of the state testing program. Hotaling agrees that this has helped in the process towards eliminating lead in drinking water.

“I think the awareness and visibility that there is now is good because it sounds like we’re going to keep going with this,” she said. “We can’t just one-and-done it.”

The most recent sampling results can be found at the CDPHE’s official website here.