Delaware botched its lead testing program in schools, then denied it
How Delaware's handling of lead water testing put thousands of students and staff at risk
The News Journal
By Amanda Fries
December 12, 2022
Key Points:
- Delaware began testing school water samples in late-2020 for elevated levels of lead.
- Schools were not made aware of the results of the testing until May 2022, over a year after most schools collected samples.
- Despite concerns expressed by school facilities managers about the testing methodology and lack of communication, state officials denied problems.
- Delaware continued to deny accountability for the botched program until the EPA intervened.
- The EPA was made aware of Delaware's noncompliance through Delaware Online/The News Journal's reports.
When you send your child to school, you expect those entrusted with caring for them to have their health and safety top of mind.
At the very least, parents expect to be notified if their child’s health or safety is in jeopardy.
But when it came to exposure to lead-tainted water, interviews with experts, state health and education department emails, and public records all revealed that Delaware failed to act, putting scores of school children and staff at risk.
Delaware families and school administrators were left in the dark for at least a year, unaware that water flowing from taps exposed children and staff to elevated lead levels.
Since Delaware Online/The News Journal reported on the water sample results on Oct. 4, 2022, the newspaper has exposed a litany of problems with Delaware's lead testing program:
- Untrained custodians and janitors were assigned to take water samples at schools without adequate guidance.
- Results were withheld from the public as well as schools, allowing students and staff to be exposed to the corrosive metal known to cause developmental and behavioral issues in children.
- Officials dismissed reporting of the issue by Delaware Online claiming it was overblown.
- The state initially claimed that it was the individual schools' responsibility to share results publicly.
- The state denied it was in noncompliance with the federal grant, claiming the state wasn't required to follow U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidance when sampling for lead in drinking water at schools.
Even when school facilities managers proactively sought the water sampling results, state officials spearheading the program dragged their feet in releasing the data to school staff, blamed schools for not sharing those results with educators and parents, and insisted Delaware was complying with federal grant requirements.
- Delaware Online's coverage of the state not following proper protocols ultimately prompted the EPA to intervene.
EPA Mid-Atlantic Region spokesperson Roy Seneca said the agency got more involved because “lead testing in Delaware’s schools was not consistently conducted in accordance with guidance set forth under the (federal) grant."
The grant requires awardees to follow the EPA's 3Ts – training, testing and taking action – from a manual that provides step-by-step guidance for performing water sampling in schools for lead.
“EPA was concerned that Delaware did not properly follow EPA’s 3Ts when sampling lead in Delaware schools,” he said, noting that samples were taken from non-consumption outlets and after prolonged stagnation times. “EPA was also concerned with the delays in communicating lead sampling results to the public.”
That’s when Delaware backpedaled and admitted to “missteps” in its lead testing and communications process, but emails, interviews, and public records lay bare a pattern of negligence, disorganization, and lack of urgency by state health and education officials since launching the program in late-2020.
The dangers of lead-contaminated water gained national attention during the Flint, Michigan water crisis, a man-made problem that surfaced in 2014 when the city switched its water supply to save money, exposing residents to hazardous levels of lead and other contaminants.
The Flint water crisis sparked a reckoning across the country around water quality and the United States’ aging infrastructure, prompting the federal government to establish grants and programs for communities to help identify lead in drinking water and remediate the risk.
While Delaware’s “missteps” in its water testing program do not reach the criminal threshold seen in Flint, experts say the state’s indifference to the health implications of lead exposure mirror Michigan's.
“They had data that they knew was a problem and they seemed to be more concerned about the appearance and the implications for the school structure rather than the health implications for the children,” said Dr. Marilyn Howarth, director of community outreach and engagement at Penn Medicine’s Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology. “I think that’s a parallel with Flint because those in authority whose role it is to protect the public’s health did not do it, or they did it in a very delayed fashion such that there was a lot of harm to children over the time frame where water outlets had elevated levels and continued to be used.”
Delaware took a year to ‘review’ sample results
Not everyone ignored the urgency of the matter.
Ted Lambert wasted no time getting the Colonial School District prepared for public health officials to sample water outlets for lead – a corrosive metal known to cause developmental and behavioral delays in children even at low exposure levels.
He responded within days to state requests for custodian contacts, building blueprints and lists of consumption points, and made sure custodians were aware of the statewide testing efforts months before sampling began in Colonial schools.
After samples were taken beginning in May 2021, Lambert followed up with the state to find out the results.
“I want to reach out to see if there is anything on our end that we need to do from the water test results,” Lambert emailed state education officials Sept. 28, 2021. “Also, will we get a report of the findings?”
Officials did have some results, replied Laura Horsey, who at the time was an education associate for the state department and a key contact for the lead testing program.
“But I will need to go through them first,” she wrote. “I should be able to touch base with you in a couple weeks.”
Lambert never heard back, emails obtained by Delaware Online through a Freedom of Information Act request show.
The correspondence between school building managers and state public health and education officials provides a fuller picture of how Delaware quietly sought water samples from school custodians, provided little guidance, and then sat on the results for months to “review” the data even when facilities managers requested them.
Department of Education Secretary Mark Holodick said the culmination of the pandemic creating abnormal conditions in schools and staff transitions in both the education department and Division of Public Health made executing an effective lead testing program difficult. As COVID-19 ravaged the state and the country, staff were pulled to address the pandemic and the school water sampling efforts became less of a priority.
Delaware began water sampling in schools in late-2020 when educational facilities, like Seaford High School, had shut off water fountains for consumption. Public health officials say the prolonged stagnation of the water may have yielded arbitrarily high lead results.
"What we have found was there were communications that were being sent but they were inconsistent and there were some assumptions being made by staff that certain things were happening and they weren’t," said Holodick, who became education secretary at the beginning of 2022. "At the end of the day, what it leads to is a communication effort that fell far too short."
None of the schools received results until May 2, 2022, a year after sampling was conducted in Colonial, and even longer at other schools where testing began prior to May 2021.
The federal Lead and Copper Rule sets the threshold to address lead in water at 15 parts per billion, but the EPA’s maximum contaminant level goal is zero because there is no safe level of lead for human consumption. The 15 ppb rule is not a public health standard. It was established to ensure water suppliers provided adequate corrosion control.
It wasn’t until this summer that schools were alerted to elevated lead levels and took action, flushing taps, installing filters and shutting off outlets with lead levels above 15 ppb, leaving students and staff exposed to the contaminant during that delay.
That aspect was a sticking point during a Christina School Board meeting on Oct. 10 when a facilities manager shared with board members that samples were taken in September 2021 and results were received the following June.
“That seems a bit unacceptable, but OK, I appreciate it,” the board member responded. “So we had students in school for an entire year not aware” of the potential for lead exposure.
Children and pregnant women are most vulnerable to lead poisoning because of the developing bodies and brains of young children and unborn babies.
While most people do not immediately show signs or symptoms of lead exposure, at high enough doses it can have immediate effects like anemia and weakness and long-term effects if it builds up in the body over time, according to the American Water Works Association.
Lead can cause brain and kidney damage in addition to effects on the blood and vitamin D metabolism, according to the association. The metal can cross the placental barrier and thus be exposed to unborn children. Lead can damage a developing baby’s nervous system. Exposure can also cause miscarriages, stillbirths and infertility in both men and women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The delay in communicating those results, as outlined by Delaware Online’s coverage, is among the reasons the EPA is exercising additional oversight of Delaware’s lead testing.
“EPA was already reviewing the issue when we received the letter from the Red Clay School Board,” Seneca said, of that district's letter, which also expressed concern about the lack of communication. “The grant requires lead sampling results be shared with the school community within 90 days.”
Since Red Clay’s complaint, advocacy groups as well as the Delaware State Education Association – the labor union representing public school educators across the state – have submitted their own complaints to the EPA.
The timing of public notification is important for those who wish to check blood lead levels for exposure. Lead only remains in the blood for about 30 days, so kids and educators who may have been exposed have missed the window for testing.
Elevated lead levels were found at multiple water outlets at Wallace Wallin Elementary, which prompted the school in the Colonial School District to provide bottled water for students and staff until a permanent solution to the lead exposure can be taken.
One parent whose children go to Wilson Elementary in the Christina School District said during a Nov. 14 public forum that at least one of her children came back with elevated blood lead levels
According to the EPA, data may go through “quality assurance” reviews before results are released publicly, but experts say it shouldn’t take more than a month.
“Test results should not take more than a couple of weeks,” Howarth, the doctor with Penn Medicine, said. “As soon as those results were available, the DOE had an ethical responsibility to inform schools of all elevated levels and take all those fixtures out of service.”
Along with those results, public health officials should have given “clear guidance” on what the results meant and what should be done, she said. “It should happen within weeks, not months, and certainly not years.”
Instead, those fixtures remained operational through 2021 and into this year until the state released the results to schools in May and began retesting. Some water fountains may have been turned off during the pandemic,
The delay and lack of communication concerned Brandywine School District’s Director of Facilities John Read, and when he finally received the water sample results on May 2, 2022, he shared those concerns with state officials.
“This is the first we have seen this report,” Read wrote in a May 3 afternoon email to Horsey at the state education department. “A little concerned because no one from the state department of Health and Social Services has contacted us or discussed this with us.”
Read, who has worked for Brandywine schools for nearly 20 years, was concerned the sampling hadn’t been done properly nor had they received results in a timely manner.
“Specifically, Mr. Read was voicing concerns regarding the delay between testing and notification of results,” Brandywine Superintendent Lincoln Hohler said in emailed responses to Delaware Online’s questions. “At the time of the email, districts only had access to draft results and would receive the final results at the same time as the public.”
Delaware's education secretary said moving forward, communication and proper testing protocol will be followed. The state departments also submitted to the EPA an updated Quality Assurance Project Plan and a communications plan to ensure Delaware follows the EPA's 3Ts guidance, according to the federal agency.
Statewide resampling planned
Red Clay’s facilities and maintenance manager Marcin Michalski also was skeptical of Delaware’s lead testing approach.
“As an FYI, Red Clay has hired a third party to retest all the ones that came up questionable,” Michalski wrote to Horsey on May 4, two days after receiving the state sampling results. “I am not sure if I would trust the results in (the state) report based on how they were administered.”
When Delaware received the $209,000 grant from the EPA, it required the First State to follow the federal agency's guidance for lead testing, called the “3Ts,” which places an emphasis on publicly communicating results and remediation steps “early and often.”
The guidance provides step-by-step instructions on developing a routine lead testing program, the dos and don’ts for proper sampling, and actions to take to address elevated lead levels.
The EPA stresses the importance of using the program to educate the community at large about the risks of lead exposure.
“Be a good and reliable source of information on your program for reducing lead in drinking water,” the 3T’s manual reads. “Be positive, proactive, and forthcoming when working with the media, members of the community, parents, students, and staff.”
Up until the EPA increased oversight of Delaware’s lead testing program, the state, according to an email response from education department Freedom of Information Act officer Alison May to one of the co-founders of Lead-Free Delaware, said it didn’t have to follow the “3Ts” testing guidance.
"This was not a requirement in Delaware’s grant application," May wrote in an Oct. 24, 2022 email. "You may be referencing 3Ts communications guidance for districts/charters."
She also claimed in an Oct. 26 email to Delaware Online that the education department was complying with the federal grant's requirement to notify the public of water sample results within 90 days by sharing those results with schools, but prior to May 2, that wasn't the case.
Many Delaware officials remain focused on minimizing concern rather than correcting errors in the program and providing clear answers to the public.
Weeks after state officials admitted to “missteps,” a state education spokesperson demanded a correction to a story that described the state's failure to publicly release results that showed high lead levels. They argued the "missteps were in how well we communicated that publication" and also disliked the characterization of "high lead levels," wanting the newspaper to instead say "elevated."
Those comments disregard the fact that results were not shared with schools or the public for over a year and ignore improper testing protocols used.
“Because the half-life of lead in blood is 30 to 60 days, we point out that the delays, false assurances of safety, and misrepresentations by DOE and DHSS about the lead in school water have made it likely impossible for anyone to document their lead poisoning,” members of Lead-Free Delaware, a grassroots advocacy group, wrote. “This is a critical concern for children who would become eligible for services, or those of childbearing age who are or may become pregnant, or who wish to breastfeed.”
A sign posted at a Colonial School District sink in November 2022, following lead testing reports.
When Delaware Online first reported the sampling results Oct. 4, 2022, school administrators, building managers and state officials claimed the article was misleading because it listed schools that returned lead levels below the federal action level of 15 ppb but still warranted monitoring as well as those results not from drinking sources.
Delaware public health officials flagged each sample result that came back with lead levels between 7.5 ppb and 15 ppb for further monitoring, highlighting those results in yellow in the publicly posted report. With the integrity of the sampling in question, the EPA ordered Delaware to shut off all water outlets, regardless of whether they’re used for drinking, that tested at 7.5 ppb or higher for lead.
The publicly posted results do not make clear what water outlets were retested; the scientific method for how many samples were taken at each school is unclear; and the only way to know what the status of those outlets are is to contact the schools directly. Few schools have publicly posted which water sources came back with elevated levels or whether they’ve been shut off or remediated in some way.
Experts say the issues with how samples were collected warrants a retest.
“You have some data, but it may not be reliable because it wasn’t secured via EPA standards by people who are trained to collect it in the same way and in a way that is reliable,” said Katrinell Davis, author of Tainted Tap and associate sociology professor and director of African American Studies at Florida State University. “And it sounds like remediation plans aren’t clear. That’s all very problematic and sadly it’s common.”
Holodick agrees.
Delaware proactively applied for the federal lead water testing grant and "secured it with good intentions," he said, but the data collected is not something Holodick said he's comfortable moving forward with.
"I want a statewide retesting effort on every public school in the state of Delaware," he said. "I think we have a real opportunity here to rebuild trust, and the only way we do that is through a really thoughtful and thorough resampling."
Moving with 'strong sense of urgency'
The mistakes made in Delaware’s execution of water sampling for lead aren’t unique, but many communities surrounding the First State have established effective and transparent lead testing programs it could have taken tabs from.
Looking to see how neighboring communities have approached water sampling for lead is one of the first strategies to consider, Penn Medicine’s Howarth said.
In neighboring Philadelphia, city public schools lay out how it goes about its sampling and notification to families; provide the detailed results for each school on a public website; and explain commonly used terminology and how to interpret the results.
“Philadelphia didn’t do it exactly right from the start, either, but they did get to a place that’s good,” Howarth said.
Adjustments in that city ranged from lowering the action threshold to 10 ppb to, most recently, the Philadelphia City Council passing legislation to ensure that all schools have lead-filtering hydration stations installed.
Holodick, who was not part of the grant application or early sampling program execution, said he's unsure whether staff looked at how other communities approach the testing program but they're taking cues from other communities now.
Delaware legislators have also pushed for answers in recent weeks after receiving few details during the Nov. 14 public forum.
Since then, department secretaries have pledged to work with districts to provide lead screening for staff and students, retest schools that had elevated lead levels and make sure information is shared in a “transparent and simple format,” according to a letter from the departments of Education and Health and Social Services to legislators Nov. 22.
Health department Secretary Molly Magarik and education department Secretary Holodick also promised to look for available and new funding sources to address lead in water, whether at home or in schools.
Magarik is working with school-based health centers, hospitals and others in the healthcare field to expand lead screening, Holodick said, and the education department is examining available and future funding sources to eventually secure lead-filter, bottle-fill stations at all public and charter schools.
Davis stressed that concern for lead exposure shouldn’t be dismissed by those in authority, nor should Flint be seen as an outlier.
“The overarching thing that should be made clear is that the audacity of water management regulators is incredibly problematic. That’s not happening just in Flint, it sounds like it’s happening everywhere and now it’s happening in the state of Delaware,” Davis said. “Just because they didn’t switch the water to a polluted water source and forget to treat for lead, they are doing other things that shouldn’t be tolerated.”
Deflecting blame and labeling concerned citizens as “hypersensitive,” also fails residents, Davis added.
Moving forward and addressing the issues requires “full transparency. Full accountability,” she said. “And the willingness to put public health before profit and what is feasible or actionable, so say people in power.”
