Like many older bulidings Downtown, 26 Broadway — built in the early 1920s — has aging lead pipes for its plumbing. Two public schools located in the former Standard Oil Building have tested positive for elevated levels of lead in the water.
BY COLIN MIXSON
The Department of Education began posting full lead-testing results for Downtown schools online only after lawmakers publicly condemned the agency for keeping information regarding the toxic chemical between the city and parents, according to a spokesman for state Sen. Daniel Squadron, though the DOE contends it has been making the data public in accordance with regulations.
“We appreciate that DOE has put this information and copies of the backpack letters online subsequent to the letter,” said Zeeshan Ott. “Going forward, it’s our hope this will be done within a day of backpack letters going home, in addition to overall communication improvements.”
Following a report in Downtown Express earlier this month that eight out of 10 public schools in Lower Manhattan have tested positive for dangerous levels of lead in their water, Squadron, along with Congressman Jerrold Nadler, assemblywomen Deborah Glick and Yuh-Line Niou, and Councilwoman Margaret Chin, all signed onto a letter to Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina demanding full disclosure of specific results for all affected schools.
Previously, the DOE has listed on its website which schools citywide have tested above the actionable threshold for lead, but the specific results were not being made public except in letters sent home with students at affected schools, which give only the readings for their school, Squadron and the others charged in their march 10 letter.
“The letters state that ‘complete test results are posted on the DOE website,’ but, as of today, complete results for any of the schools tested in Lower Manhattan are not posted on the DOE website,” the pols’ letter to Farina reads. “The letters also fail to outline specific remediation plans.”
The recent test results come in the wake of new testing protocols implemented by the DOE, which require faucets and water fountains to remain inactive for eight hours before testing. This more sensitive standard led to revelations that water in many schools throughout the city contained lead at levels considered high enough — 15 parts per billion or more — to warrant immediate action by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
But lead levels varied widely between schools, and even between different sources within the same school. At some affected schools, the lead levels were only slightly higher than the EPA’s “action level,” but at 26 Broadway, for example, home to the Lower Manhattan Community Middle School and Richard R. Green High School of Teaching, lead was found at one kitchen faucet at 1,900-parts-per billion — more than 70 times the average amount found in homes at Flint Michigan.
“That is very, very high,” Dr. Judith Zelikoff, a toxicologist and professor at the Department of Environmental Medicine and NYU Langone Medical Center told the Downtown Express.
Because the results vary so widely, Squadron and other elected officials argue that simply making public which schools exceeded the action level does not provide enough information to parents, the public, and policymakers to fully understand scope of the problem and address the situation.
Squadron and the other Downtown electeds are asking the DOE to inform all elected officials and community boards about the full testing results for all schools in their purview, post full details of all test results on each school’s website along with specific remediation plans for each affected fixture, make all future test results publicly available, and meet with any PTAs that request an informational meeting.
“We understand that this is a sensitive subject,” the letter reads. “As such, the DOE should be fully transparent with all available information and communicate with all affected stakeholders.”
But the DOE has responded that full test results are going up on schools’ websites and so are already being made public — as required by the state.
State regulations require that all school districts post every backpack letter and the full lab report to each school’s website within six weeks of receiving the lab reports. DOE has been posting results online on an ongoing basis since December, months before the pols’ letter went out, in compliance with the regulations, according to agency spokeswoman Toya Holness.
She pointed to the websites of a few Downtown schools, such as Battery Park School where results were already up, but Holness could not say which schools citywide already have their letters and results posted so far, or when any of those letters went up.
That makes Squadron’s staff suspicious as to why test results suddenly popped up on websites of some Downtown schools a few days after they sent the letter. Ott provided a screenshot of Battery Park School’s website from March 13, which didn’t have the information for a letter sent on home with students on Jan. 31.
