As Medford schools round out almost a month in session, elected officials have worried dormant water fountains might progress to issues of lead poisoning, such as what happened with Boston. This week, the Transcript examines lead in schools and where Medford fits into recent state tests.

Lead in drinking water has been in the national spotlight since the public learned government officials were concealing information about lead-tainted water in Flint, Mich. earlier this year.

And, the issue cropped up again closer to home when Boston schools revealed dormant water fountains were exceeding standards.

This week, the Transcript examines the lead issue, as Medford school officials await the results of water tests by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA).

Now dozens of Massachusetts public schools are testing their drinking water not only for lead, but other pollutants. Many have tested above the federal action level for lead or copper over the past decade, and many more have never been tested.

As of mid-May, 51 schools responding to a voluntary Lead and Copper in Schools Maintenance Checklist from the state Department of Environmental Protection reported results above the action level.

As of Monday, Medford Public Schools had not responded to the DEP checklist, which the agency sent to districts in January.

However, Medford Superintendent of Schools Roy Belson said water in the district’s schools are tested regularly by the MWRA, including a recent round of tests for which the district is still awaiting results.

The previous set of tests took place in September 2015.

“Our lead levels are so far below the requirements that we easily passed muster with them,” Belson said. “The high school gets checked very frequently. Basically, we’re well below [regulated levels]. At this point and time, we think we’re OK because they’ve pretty much covered every school over the last few years.”

Public water suppliers have never collected lead and copper samples from at least 150 Massachusetts schools, while the vast majority of schools have not been tested within the past year.

Boston Public Schools made headlines this past spring after tests revealed elevated levels of lead in drinking fountains at four schools, and one week later, six other BPS buildings prematurely had their fountains turned on before lead testing had been completed.

But Boston is far from the only community in the region to find elevated levels of lead or copper in school water. Since 2010, public schools in Malden, Melrose, Natick, Newton, Stoneham, Wayland and Wilmington have been among those to test over the action level of 15 parts per billion for lead or 1.3 parts per million for copper.

In Melrose, a kitchen faucet and a drinking fountain at the Franklin Early Childhood Center tested above the 15 parts per billion action level for lead in 2013.

That same year at Stoneham High School, a water fountain outside the cafeteria showed lead levels of 17.5 ppb.

A tap at the Early Learning Center in Malden exceeded the action level for lead in 2010.

In each of these cases, lead service lines, which were banned in 1986 under the Safe Drinking Water Act, were not the problem. While older communities still have some lead service lines — Malden has 2,705, down from 6,281 a decade ago — most service lines at school buildings have been replaced with materials such as cast iron or ductile iron.

Among the schools that filled out the DEP’s lead and copper checklist, 389 reported not having lead service lines, one reported having a lead line and 64 were unsure.

The water source is also not usually the problem. Water in the commonwealth is typically lead-free when communities receive it. According to the MWRA — which takes its water from the Quabbin Reservoir 60 miles west of Boston and delivers it to 51 communities, including Medford — lead levels in MWRA water have dropped almost 90 percent since corrosion control was instituted 20 years ago.

But even without lead service lines or lead fixtures, lead can leach into drinking water from brass pipes that contain the poisonous chemical. Lead solder on pipes, which was banned in 1989, can have the same effect.

The longer water sits stagnant in pipes without being used or flushed – say, overnight in a school building – the greater the risk becomes.

“We live in an old [region] where this stuff is,” said Becky Smith, Massachusetts campaigns director for the environmental advocacy group Clean Water Action. “We knew lead was bad a long, long time ago, and decisions that were made to use it anyway have really left us a toxic legacy.”

Never been tested

In Massachusetts, each public water supplier is required to test two fixtures — one kitchen faucet and one drinking fountain — at two schools per sampling period. A sampling period can be every six months, once a year or once every three years, depending on the results of lead testing in a community’s homes.

These state requirements are not strictly enforced, but are more stringent than those of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which does not require schools to test for lead at all.

Nonetheless, most school taps across the commonwealth have never been tested, and schools in larger communities often go years between samples.

“Resources and time is a big part of it,” said Malden Assistant City Engineer Gary Stead, noting testing needs to take place early in the morning after water has been sitting overnight but before students arrive. “It’s kind of an organizational and a manpower issue.”

In the wake of the crisis in Flint, Mich. that led to as many as 12,000 children being exposed to high levels of lead in drinking water, some Massachusetts school districts have performed comprehensive tests of their water fixtures for the first time — with unforeseen results.

In Natick, samples collected at two schools in 2014 came back below the action level for lead and copper. But this year, when the town tested hundreds of fixtures throughout the district, elevated lead and copper levels were discovered at 82 faucets across six buildings.

Some sinks came back several times above the lead action level, with one initially reading 474 ppb. Four drinking fountains tested between 15 and 23 ppb.

At Natick High School, 15 fountains and 18 sinks tested high for copper.

The district has since replaced fountains with water bubblers that have internal filters to reduce lead, flushed water fixtures each morning for two to five minutes, and put signage on sinks in every school reading, “Not Drinking Water.”

“We plan to retest all schools at two points over the summer, as well as develop a regular schedule for water testing moving forward,” Natick Superintendent Dr. Peter Sanchioni wrote in a letter to the Natick school community.

A lack of comprehensive testing also precipitated the revelations in the Boston Public Schools. Most BPS buildings have used bottled water exclusively since the late 1980s, when testing showed elevated levels of lead. But among the 38 city schools that still use tap water, most had gone years without testing.

When 364 drinking fountains at those 38 schools were tested earlier this year, eight fountains across four schools showed high lead levels.

“We’re getting down to the root cause of what’s happening here,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told reporters. “It certainly concerns me that we’re putting the health of our kids at risk.”

Different courses

There is no blueprint to follow for schools that test high for lead. The DEP recommends schools remove fixtures with elevated lead levels, but it does not require them to do so. Often, it falls on local officials to determine the best course of action.

In Stoneham, a variety of steps have been taken since a fountain at the high school tested high for lead. According to Water and Sewer Supervisor Bob Radigan, the fountain in question and others were replaced with water bubblers that have filtration systems; some fountains with lead-containing brass fixtures were swapped out for lead-free brass; and custodians were instructed to flush fountains for 30-60 seconds each morning.

“As long as someone gets by there and hits it first thing in the morning, you’re in good shape because the rest of day you’re not going to have more than two hours of standstill,” Radigan said.

At the Early Childhood Center in Melrose, the DEP did not propose any remedial action after a kitchen faucet and a water fountain tested high for lead in 2013.

The MWRA, which performed the tests and analyzed the samples, relayed the results to Melrose officials and suggested flushing out the system each morning, but it did not recommend removing the fixtures.

“Whenever we are advised what to do, we do that to the letter of the law,” said Melrose DPW Director John Scenna, adding that the Early Childhood Center is flushed regularly. “I’m very confident that we followed that.”

Getting schools tested

In the wake of the test results in Boston, Gov. Charlie Baker announced a $2 million program through the DEP to perform additional lead testing in public schools across the state. The Massachusetts Clean Water Trust, which provides loans to the DEP to fund water infrastructure projects, is subsidizing the program.

Previously, the state government did not provide any money for municipalities to test for lead.

According to DEP spokesperson Ed Coletta, the new funding could help as many as 1,750 schools perform tests, create plumbing maps of their facilities, train staff in best sampling practices, and devise long-term testing plans.

“We would like to see every single school district test every single school,” Coletta said. “That’s certainly our hope.”

Coletta said the program will be a collaborative effort: DEP, EPA, MWRA and private labs have all offered to analyze samples, and the University of Massachusetts system will help the DEP review and prioritize applications.

Around Greater Boston, communities seem to be taking notice. Officials in Melrose, Stoneham, Hamilton-Wenham and Saugus all told Wicked Local they were planning to apply for the program or already had.

“We have a potential to have a huge benefit from this program,” Melrose City Engineer Elena Proakis-Ellis said. “Financially, it’s tough to sample all locations in all schools.”

But environmental advocates question whether water quality in the schools and beyond is being prioritized at the state level, particularly in light of substantial cuts to the DEP budget.

In 2009, DEP had a funding level of $33.6 million and a staffing level of 940. In the proposed House budget for Fiscal 2017, just over $25 million is allocated for DEP, and the department’s current staffing level is 645.

At the same time, the department is being asked to take on new responsibilities, such as enforcing the EPA Clean Water Act historically administered at the federal level.

“They have broad responsibilities, laws not enforced, fees not collected, and that’s related to years of disproportionate budget cuts and staff reductions,” said Environmental League of Massachusetts legislative director Erica Mattison.

More funding for lead testing in schools is welcome, Mattison said, but a one-time infusion of $2 million only goes so far.

“You can go through $2 million pretty quickly,” she said. “We have an aging water infrastructure system in Massachusetts. A couple million dollars here, a couple million dollars there, it’s better than nothing. But if you really want to address our water needs in a sustainable way, starting to take on these costs more aggressively is what’s needed.”

On the DEP’s lead and copper survey, schools were asked whether every tap and fixture used for water consumption in their buildings had been sampled for lead and copper at least once. Seventy answered “yes.” Three-hundred ninety-two answered “no.”

But schools are seeing the headlines and starting to mobilize, including some that had never even considered testing for lead.

Sean O’Neil, executive director of the Salem Academy Charter School on the North Shore, said the issue came to his attention after lead was found in the Boston Public Schools. Now, O’Neil is working on hiring a contractor to have his school’s water tested.

The school was built just 12 years ago, he said, but it stands on the site of an old mill building and may have old pipes.

“We want to make sure our water is clean,” O’Neil said, “and safe for our kids.”