A day after Ridgefield School District officials learned that water sources at two of its schools tested positive for elevated levels of lead, the district on Thursday received a technical memo from Sterling Technologies offering details on the leaded water sources.
Water sources at two of the district’s four schools — Ridgefield High School and View Ridge Middle School — showed elevated lead, and both locations had multiple water sources test above the Washington State Department of Health limit of 20 parts per billion and the federal limit of 15 parts per billion.
According to the memo, three locations in the high school had elevated levels: the wood shop at 35.9 parts per billion, the 200-building hallway at 28.5 parts per billion and the library at 21.5 parts per billion.
The high school was built in the late 1960s and was expanded in 2014. The water sources that tested for elevated levels of lead all came from original parts of the school, Superintendent Nathan McCann said.
View Ridge also had three sources test for too much lead: the library at 34 parts per billion, Room No. 1 at 28.2 parts per billion and the north hallway at 15 parts per billion. The middle school was built in the 1970s.
McCann said the district plans to deal with the problem as quickly as possible, and it is currently in talks with a local company to determine the next steps, which will most likely include testing a wider spread of water sources to hone in on what is causing the elevated numbers.
“The next step is not definitive yet until we hear from the experts,” McCann said.
In local water supplies, the Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency prescribe regulations that limit the amount of certain contaminants in water provided by public water systems. Lead in drinking water primarily comes from plumbing installed prior to 1986.
Clark County schools have been prompted to test their drinking water after a test in Portland schools found multiple problems with water there. So far, water sources at Dorothy Fox Elementary School and the Zellerbach Administration Center in the Camas School District and Image Elementary School in Evergreen Public Schools were found to have elevated levels of lead.
