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your homegrown newspaper January 12, 2022
Lake County school districts address lead in water
Vol. 18, No. 17
By Taylor Davison / Valley Journal
Local Veteran pg. 6
Health &
fitness
Inside pg. 13
Sports pg. 25
LAKE COUNTY — As of the first of the year, all schools accredited by the Montana Board of Public Education were required to have their drinkable water inspected for lead. Part of a regulation enacted in Jan. 2020 by the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) to minimize lead levels in the drinking water provided to children, school districts were required to sample all drinking water fountains, kitchen fixtures, and all other “potential human consumption” fixtures for lead levels by Dec. 31. Paid for by the State of Montana, the samplings taken at each school are looking for an action 2022 level of 5.0 ug/L (a measure of density), or 5 parts per billion (ppb). While the EPA and Center for Disease Control agree there is no known safe level of lead in a child’s blood, children ages six and under are particularly susceptible to the effects of lead. According to the State of Montana website 5.0 ug/L was selected because it is the practical quantitation level (PQL) for lead. This means that it is the lowest concentration at which lead can accurately be measured in water. The Montana Department of Environmental quality devel-
SUMMER GODDARD / VALLEY JOURNAL
Cherry Valley School had 19 sinks with unacceptable lead levels. All have been corrected.
oped a web application, EQuIS Collect, that allows schools to upload the required information, with a dashboard to allow schools and the public to view the results and associated actions. Schools in Lake County had several faucets with beyond acceptable lead levels. Administrators said they acted quickly. Some had both tested and remedied the faucets in question before the deadline for their initial findings. The Ronan school district w w w.va l le yj our na l.net
hired a company out of Kalispell to test the faucets in all their buildings in September 2021, explained Superintendent Mark Johnston. The test involved flushing out the water systems the night before, then having the company test every faucet the next day. “There were quite a few of the drinking faucets that needed a filter,” Johnston said. Initial test results on EQuIS show the Ronan school district had 81 faucets with above-acceptable lead out of the 396
sources tested in all four schools: - K William Harvey Elementary had 24 unacceptable out of 105, with a range of 5 to 13 ppb in 19 sinks and 5 to 6 ppb in four drinking fountains with one outlier at 72 ppb. - Ronan Middle School had 5 unacceptable out of 123, with a range of 5 ppb to 35 ppb entirely in sinks. - Ronan High School had 11 unacceptable out of 102, with a range of 5 to 43 ppb entirely in see page 2
