by Tony Gray
posted: 15 December 2021

The Whitehall Journal urges New York Governor Kathy Hochul to approve bill S2122A, which was delivered December 10 for her signature. The bill lowers lead limits in school drinking water. It passed both houses of the New York State legislature in June 2021. The legislation will cut the lead limit for drinking water in NYS schools from the current 15 parts per billion (ppb) to just 5 ppb. We would be one of the few states with lead thresholds of 5 ppb or lower if the bill becomes law.

Any New York school that can't meet the lowered threshold for the toxic metal will have to provide free drinking water for all members of the campus community. Whitehall will very likely be one of those schools.

Whitehall Central Schools had 26 water outlets fail, out of the 95 tested, in 2016. The same 26 failed again this year. No student is drinking from the failed outlets because the few that were water fountains have been disconnected. The good news was that 69 of the school district's water outlets had less lead than the state limit.

The bad news is that Superintendent of Schools Patrick Dee told the Board of Education earlier this year that only five of the school's 69 water outlets would pass if state law lowers the lead threshold in drinknig water to 5 ppb. Five!

So, the school will be faced with some expensive choices. It can install and maintain very expensive filters to remove or reduce lead from potable water entering the district's water mains.

Or, it can plan on buying a lot of water for a very long time. The bill provides funds to remediate lead levels in the school drinking water but not to provide clean drinking water. How would the school remediate lead that comes into the school from its provider? That is a village infrastructure issue that does not seem like it would be paid for by the remediation money earmarked by the bill's sponsors.

The reason for that is because the Village of Whitehall, which supplies the school with its water, documented lead levels in the water supply at 8.1 ppb and the scary part it that number may actually be higher.

NYS Department of Health regulations only require village lead and copper levels to be tested every four-to-five years, so the value in the recent annual water quality reports mandated the federal Environmental Protection Agency is an old number. The last lead test for Whitehall village water was conducted in August 2019.

Before that, the water's lead level was 7 ppb when tested in July 2016. It's hard to say why the lead level increased, from 7 to 8.1 ppb, in the three years between the last two test. It is possible the village's next lead test may show the level has decreased. Or, it may show the level has increased again.

Just for the sake of argument, let us assume the lead concentration in the village water supply remains constant, at 8.1 ppb.

Having 8.1 ppb in the village water supply is not a problem for the village because the state and federal limits will remain at 15ppb for municipal water. But, if the water coming in to the school district's water system has a lead level of 8.1 ppb, that will be a problem for the school district because they will fail lead tests if levels above 5ppb are detected.

It is possible, I assume, that some of the lead may not be transported all the way down Buckley Road and maybe some doesn't get pumped up to the spouts of water fountains. But, it is probably better to assume otherwise.

After all, if the water coming is has 8.1 ppb lead content, the water in the school system will probably have around the same concentration of the heavy metal.

Back in the summer, I asked the new Village Mayor, Julie Eagan, what the village policy would be if the law now on the governor's desk became law. After all, the village is meeting its legal obligation regarding the lead level in the municipal water supply, as long as the state and federal limits remain at 15ppb.

I asked her if the village would subsidize the cost of providing water bottles for students if they failed the new state lead test. Even though the village is under it's limit, the school is a customer that pays a premium for its water because it lies outside the village limit. I was interested because students who attend the district are children and grandchildren of village residents. A few weeks later, she informed me the members of the village board were still discussing the issue and would reserve comment until a policy was formulated by the board. Fair enough, since the fate of the bill was still up in the air at that point.

Now, though, the bill is on the governor's desk and she has 10 days to approve or veto it. I don't see an interim governor vetoing a child safety issue the year before an election.

Mayor Eagan was not immediately available for comment so I don't know what the village response and posture will be if Gov. Hochul signs the bill into law. Since this is less a news article than it is an editorial urging the governor to take action, I am not waiting for word from the mayor before publishing this.