How a School Water Safety Law Went from Strong to Weak

In 1988, Congress passed a law that told schools to do two things: 1) test for lead in your drinking water and if you find more than the allowable level, reduce it. 2) inform the public.

Ten years later, a federal appeals court in Louisiana struck down the EPA's authority to require lead testing in schools.

So the EPA began reaching out to school districts with a voluntary list of water safety recommendations. Some schools took them up on it, some didn't. And some school districts, such as Newark, instituted a patchwork of practices that included installing water filters and telling custodians to flush each faucet for two minutes at the start of every school day.

Those measures seem to have failed. This month, thirty schools in Newark were found to have elevated levels of lead in the drinking water. As parents worry and ask for answers, those schools are now handing out bottled water to students.

And that's raising a question for parents in the New York area: is the drinking water safe in my child's school?

Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said in an email that the city tests for lead in the water in its public schools. “Every public school in the system built in the years before the banning of lead in construction has been tested since 2002 or implements a DOHMH-recommended protocol to ensure the safety of the students and staff in the building," she wrote. DOHMH is the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.