Schools in Detroit shut off fountains

DETROIT — Some 50,000 Detroit public school students will start the school year today drinking water from coolers, not fountains, after the discovery of elevated levels of lead or copper — the latest setback in a state already dealing with the consequences of contaminated tap water in Flint and other communities.

Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti expects the closure of water fountains and other drinking fixtures in all 106 schools to go smoothly because the district — Michigan’s largest — had previously turned off the tap in 18 schools. The coolers and bottled water will cost $200,000 over two months, after which the district probably will seek bids for a longer-term contract, he said.

Detroit is not the first major school district to switch to bottled water. The 49,000-student district in Portland, Ore., turned off its fixtures in 2016 after a scandal over high levels of lead in the water at almost every school — a problem that took two years to fix. Fountains at most schools in the 80,000-student Baltimore districts have been shut off for more than a decade.

Detroit’s move is being welcomed by experts and state lawmakers who say such voluntary testing should be mandated in school districts nationwide, only 43 percent of which tested for lead in 2016 or 2017, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

While water utilities are required to check for lead, they focus on a sample of homes, which does not guarantee that all individual residences or buildings are lead-free.