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Public Schools Will Be Required to Test for Lead in Water Under New Rules

State health department updating decades-old health rules; lead testing not currently mandated

By Myers Reece
Rankin Elementary School in Kalispell. Beacon File Photo

An update to state health rules in Montana will include a provision requiring all public schools to test for lead in water at their facilities.

Lead testing at public schools in Montana is currently voluntary, unless a district is defined as its own public water supply, which isn’t common as most districts are part of municipal and community water systems.

The revised rules, expected to be available for public comment in May and then go into effect in October, come as the Kalispell public school district has been preparing to launch its own voluntary lead testing, initially anticipated to begin this summer.

In light of the forthcoming mandatory state testing, however, Kalispell school officials will revisit the issue to decide whether it makes sense to initiate their own testing since it will be required anyway once the new rules are in place.

The Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) implemented health rules at public schools in 1986 and has not updated them since, making them more than 30 years old and out of step with modern regulations and practices. The agency has partnered with the state Office of Public Instruction, Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Labor and Industry in the revision.

William Biskupiak, school health and asthma program manager for DPHHS, said once the rule update package is filed with the Montana Secretary of State, a public comment period will be launched in May. Biskupiak said the revision process has been in the works for years, held up on occasion by factors such as staff turnover or other time-sensitive issues taking precedence.

The rules cover a range of public health and safety issues. Many existing rules won’t need to be changed, but the new lead testing requirement will be one of several notable overhauls, including integrated pest management and chemical storage safety. The DPHHS partnered with the DEQ on the new lead rule.

In other cases, language will be updated to formally reflect current practices in place at most schools and already mandated under other codes and laws. As an example, Biskupiak said the rules from 1986 stipulate smoking only in teacher’s lounges.

“There were some things that were very outdated,” he said.

Under federal requirements, municipal water systems test for lead in the water and at residential locations. But tests at schools and commercial buildings connected to the water systems aren’t mandatory, meaning that even though the water itself has been tested, the service lines and fixtures onsite haven’t been tested unless it happened voluntarily.

“Lead in water is primarily an internal plumbing issue, and by internal I mean either within the building itself or in the service lines leading to the building,” said Jon Dilliard, bureau chief for the DEQ public water supply bureau.

Federal guidelines governing water supplies set a maximum lead limit of 15 parts per billion, but the new school-specific rules will set a more stringent standard at 5 parts per billion due to the impact of lead on children and their development.

“The younger a child is, the more susceptible the child is to lead poisoning and the effects of lead,” Dilliard said. “The schools obviously contain a more vulnerable population, so we believe the levels should be lower.”

The 5 parts per billion figure will be a hard-and-fast maximum contamination level, as opposed to the federal requirements’ 90th percentile actionable level threshold. While Dilliard said the Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say “no lead is good,” testing becomes less accurate below 5 parts per billion.

“Below 5 parts per billion that test is not reliably quantitative,” he said. “We basically set it as low as we could while still being quantitative in our results.”

Public elementary and high schools will be governed by lead testing requirements, but childcare facilities for younger children won’t. The DEQ and DPHHS are working to secure funding to help cover the cost of testing and remediation for schools.

The Kalispell public school district began exploring lead testing after a parent of a Hedges Elementary School student raised concerns last year. Mark Flatau, the district’s superintendent, said the district voluntarily tested for lead 13 years ago, and officials recently outlined a tentative three-year testing schedule that would begin this summer.

Flatau said the timing makes sense with a host of upgrades occurring at schools across the city, along with new construction, but he isn’t sure what the district will do now that the state will require testing.

“We don’t want to spend seven or eight thousand dollars and then have to do it again in a year,” he said. “It may require us to postpone it a year.”

Flatau welcomes the new statewide testing requirement.

“All the schools will be held to the same standard, which is always a good thing,” he said.