Sir Allan MacNab taps slowly coming back on after lead retesting by school board
About a quarter of drinking taps at Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School are back in use after followup testing found their water no longer exceeds Ontario’s lead limit.
Mark Taylor, communications officer for the Hamilton public school board, said all of the west Mountain school’s 38 drinking-water fixtures were taken out of service as a precaution earlier this month after an initial eight tested above the limit.
The board provided water coolers as staff continued to test the taps. The school announced nine were back in service as of Nov. 21.
“We have had more results come back and several more fixtures will be returned to service,” Taylor said this week.
The Magnolia Drive high school is one of two dozen public schools across the city needing corrective action after sampling found their drinking-water fixtures exceeded the lead limit of 10 parts per billion either before or after flushing.
One or more taps were still out of service at Ancaster and Dundas Valley high schools, and Beverly Central, Eastdale, Elizabeth Bagshaw, Helen Detwiler, Norwood Park, Tapleytown and Yorkview elementary schools.
A new provincial regulation that took effect on July 1 requires school boards to test all taps providing water for drinking or food preparation over three years, but Hamilton’s public board chose to test a third of fixtures at every school.
Corrective measures include daily flushing of taps that were over the lead limit before flushing and replacement of those that were still too high after flushing.
In MacNab’s case, the board chose to take every tap out of service after results on eight showed all were over the limit before flushing and five were still above afterwards, with the worst being seven times the limit once flushed.
Taylor said the board is still repairing and retesting the eight initial taps, with each to have two tested samples taken a week apart before being put back in use.
“Results are still coming back,” he said.
Testing elsewhere found exceedances at 12 Hamilton Catholic schools and Georges P. Vanier French public high school, says the city’s health department.
It says lead is mostly a concern for children under seven and pregnant women because it affects the nervous system’s development.
Catholic board chair Pat Daly said his board decided to test all school taps this year, rather than over three years as allowed, and took all required corrective measures.
Hamilton public board chair Todd White said he’s comfortable with staff ’s plan to sample a third of taps at every school over three years.
He said it wasn’t feasible to test all 1,500 taps by an Oct. 31 deadline for the first round of testing and the board’s approach flags any concerns.
“We expect that most if not all problems would be identified through that first round,” White said.
“The selection that staff has chosen, they believe would cover off most of the problems.”