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Outraged City Council demands BPS shut all water fountains immediately; BPS asks councilors to calm down

The Globe posts a letter from 12 city councilors who say they are outraged over the news that kids at some schools may have taken drinks from water fountains with unacceptably high lead levels.

Most Boston public schools - some 88 of the city's 125 public schools - already use bottled water instead of bubblers.

"It is unacceptable that our young people may have been exposed to unsafe conditions," the councilors wrote Superintendent Tommy Chang and School Committee Chairman Michael O'Neill. They asked that water fountains at all public schools immediately be shut until school officials can prove they're not going to be serving up lead-infused water.

Only Councilor Frank Baker (Dorchester) did not sign the letter.

In response, BPS says:

In the interest of continuing a transparent and deliberate process to ensure the safety of our students and staff, BPS remains committed to discussing the issues raised by the council. BPS continues to examine its policies relating to water and is implementing more frequent testing protocols to ensure the district’s water quality is exceeding the state standard.

School officials are planning a May 18 meeting to discuss the water issue.

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Comments

Imagine The Mayor showing up driving a Water Truck !... like the Poland Springs Trucks!

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Each one weighing over 40 pounds! Pretty much useless without the matching dispensers!

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In the process of replacing water fountains and the connecting plumbing in a half dozen Boston Schools, which had previously been shutdown because the water tested positive for leached lead, students were exposed to lead in the water by drinking from the replacement fountains.

In a project of this nature, the top goal is to deliver lead free water for consumption without exposing students to lead. The project managers failed. (I assume there was a project manager.) Some students were poisoned with lead.

Lead is a neurotoxin. It inhibits neurological development, can adversely affect IQ and causes learning disabilities.

The Globe reported unnamed "officials" say a miscommunication between BPS staff and contractors is why students drank from the new fountains that supplied water with leached lead. The Herald named two maintenance managers who were put on leave as a result of the failure. No one has reported how students are being screened for exposure as far as I know.

That the city and schools are undertaking the effort to replace bottled water with fountains is a good thing. That we botched it knowing all we learned from the Flint water crisis seems inexcusable.

We learned testing properly to detect leached is complicated and requires a methodology. We don't know if this project was staffed with an expert on water testing. We do know Superintendent Chang identified an expert in testimony at Boston City Council Thursday. We don't know when said expert started working on this.

Superintendent Chang's approach, which I characterize as "back off I've got this," suffers from a flaw, he has not offered enough information about what happened and why, so that we can trust him and the folks working to manage this moving forward, and to mitigate the damage to students who were exposed.

City Councilors should not wait until the 18th. As soon as students were exposed to lead this became a crisis and should be treated as one.

In my opinion. Super Chang's response is similar to Mayor Walsh's handling of crisis-- circle the wagons. I don't think that approach serves the public health interest, I think it subverts it.

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School officials are planning a May 18 meeting to discuss the water issue.

Yeah I mean don't hurry or anything.

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...what's gonna happen if they don't hurry? no one will get fired. in fact, they probably have guaranteed raises coming.

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but the suspended were managers. I would like to know if the two fellows in the poop had letters of endorsement from a few of the outraged city councilors when the nationwide search was conducted for their BPS positions.

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One of the he's is a she.

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last week.

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BPS spends $415k a year on bottled water? If they switched to bottle-less water filters, they'll save a ton of money.

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Inline water filters pay for the installation and filter replacement costs in almost no time when they replace any variety of bottled water.

However -- I thought MWRA water was some of the finest in the country, so why are they buying bottled water in the first place? Are all the pipes in the school system leaching lead?

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But they deliver it to boston water and sewer. BWS is responsible for getting it to the meter and the property owner from the meter in. This is either a BWS problem or BPS, not MWRA.

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I mean, if this happened in a suburban school, best believe it'd be branded a crisis. But as always, socioeconomics kick in and the inner city are told to deal with it.

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This is so lame and sad, they have know about the lead pipe situation for what...40+ years now? All of these buildings from the Great Depression era, and we still haven't replaced the lead pipes? This goes back way longer than Walsh and Chang. I'm not even going to talk about all the asbestos and lead paint in the BPS buildings, cause that would horrify a lot of parents. Seriously, next open house just walk around and look for pipes wrapped up like a sloppy cast, or paint coming off ancient walls.

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And what about other city buildings like City Hall, School Street building, community centers, swimming pools. Are they going to double check those?

As to bottled water... I note the community building in Roslindale purchases bottled water for their day care program, but that is paid-for by the non-profit that runs the program.

I once asked why and they said it was after the building was renovated there were no water fountains on that floor. Seems the city rebuild forgot that.

Just as well then, maybe?

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