The Bainbridge Island School District has a new plan to address lead in its drinking fountains and sinks on school grounds, part of an ongoing effort to end the contamination of potable water on campus.

At the Nov. 13 school board meeting, district leaders approved facilities director Dane Fenwick’s schedule to retest all drinking water outlets on school grounds for the presence of lead, a dangerous metal known for its negative effects on cognition and development. Results will be issued publicly in late November and early December.

For about five years between the district’s last regular lead-testing cycle, the majority of drinking water fixtures on campus — lead-contaminated or not — have been operational.

“Once we became aware of elevated results, we moved quickly to shut off affected fixtures and begin remediation,” said Fenwick in an email.

As of Oct. 2, all drinking water outlets on BISD campuses that showed high levels of lead in previous test results have been shut off, about 35 total.

“Part of the draft plan has really already been implemented, which is to immediately install the filters and shut off the fixtures,” said Fenwick. “Of course, once we receive the results, we’ll analyze those and prepare our remediation efforts, which means we’ll update the action plan.”

The last time BISD’s water sources were tested for lead was in 2019-2020. Data from all water sources on campus was collected by the state Department of Health, but remediation efforts fell apart during pandemic-related chaos, and little record of the process was retained.

At the time, 15 drinking fountains at multiple schools were found to have dangerous lead levels above 15 parts per billion (ppb), the federal threshold for action by an agency — 11 of which were at Ordway Elementary School. In total, 51 water sources had “elevated levels” of lead, or 6 ppb or more.

A 2021 law requires all school districts in Washington state to test their drinking water for lead and other contaminants, then remediate any systems that show lead levels over 5 ppb. Districts must also communicate their findings with community members.

This plan is not the first time BISD has performed lead testing in its drinking water facilities, but documentation of some prior projects is scant, which paints an incomplete picture, Fenwick explained.

BISD conducted voluntary testing as far back as the 2015-2016 school year, first through a consulting firm, and again through in-house staff. At the time, lead levels over 20 ppb prompted remediation efforts — which meant shutting down the fixture, replacing it, or removing it.

The district tested again in 2019-2020, this time through the state Department of Health. When COVID shutdowns began, prevention measures were “abandoned,” and documentation on lead testing was lost or not completed, which created a difficult blueprint for modern testing, Fenwick said.

“We started trying to figure out what had happened, who had done what, and we realized very quickly that with all of these test results, particularly at Ordway Elementary, it was not worth our time to try and figure out what had happened and prove it,” said Fenwick. “It was a better idea to just take action. So all BISD drinking water outlets with test results indicating elevated lead levels were shut off immediately.”

At Sakai Intermediate School, for example, the 2019-2020 surveys found that six water sources had elevated levels of lead, two of which were over 15 ppb — “which is very concerning,” Fenwick noted.

“[However,] it’s a little hard to decipher what was actually sampled at the time, but it’s noted on the Department of Health results that it is an appliance, and we don’t know if it’s an appliance that has been there all this time, or has been replaced. We just don’t have any documentation on that,” said Fenwick.

In the facilities teams’ process to shut down dangerous water sources on campuses, they found that some steps had been taken to prevent lead contamination in past testing cycles, but there had been no record of the effort.

“When the guys were going around and shutting things off, particularly at Ordway, they went into several classrooms while the teachers were present, and said, ‘Hey, my name’s such-and-such, I’m here to shut off the water at your sink and drinking fountain,’ and the teacher made comments like, ‘Oh, that hasn’t worked for years,’” said Fenwick. “And then the guys go underneath and see that everything’s been disconnected — all the water supply lines. And so, in those terms, we know that things were done, they just weren’t done fully.”