Seven of 22 Newark schools tested this year had levels of lead in some drinking water sources that surpassed federal standards according to data obtained by WNYC/Gothamist. That runs counter to repeated assurances given by school board officials and City Hall that there was no lead in any drinking water at any of the city’s public schools.
As recently as last week, Water Department Director Kareem Adeem reiterated this to a crowd of more than a hundred Newark residents attending a “State of Our Water” town hall event at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
“The schools [do] independent testing and they post that testing on their website,” Adeem told the audience. “They don’t have lead in the schools.”
But that’s not the case.
Listen to Gwynne Hogan's report on WNYC:
Seven of 22 Newark schools tested this year had levels of lead in some drinking water sources that surpassed federal standards according to data obtained by WNYC/Gothamist. That runs counter to repeated assurances given by school board officials and City Hall that there was no lead in any drinking water at any of the city’s public schools.
As recently as last week, Water Department Director Kareem Adeem reiterated this to a crowd of more than a hundred Newark residents attending a “State of Our Water” town hall event at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
“The schools [do] independent testing and they post that testing on their website,” Adeem told the audience. “They don’t have lead in the schools.”
But that’s not the case.
High levels of lead in drinking water were initially detected at some of the city’s schools in 2016. The city shut off water fountains in 30 school buildings. In hindsight, that turned out to be a harbinger of a much broader problem that extended beyond Newark’s schools, and into tens of thousands of private homes with lead pipes or fixtures.
Once the issues in Newark’s schools emerged in 2016, lawmakers changed state regulations and required schools to test all of their water sources every six years and post the data online. Newark initially complied and released their data in 2016. The school board has continued to test water in subsequent years but has not informed the public when water has been found to exceed federal guidelines.
WNYC/Gothamist recently obtained records of water testing conducted in more than 60 schools through an Open Public Records Act request.
The vast majority of water samples showed low or no levels of lead. Of the more than 300 water sources tested in 2019, just ten exceeded the federal standard of 15 parts per billion.
Schools with lead exceedances:
Graphic by Laura Laderman & Naomi Tinga / Measure of America
In 2018, only one of the 11 schools tested had a federal lead exceedance. However, 2017 was worse, with elevated levels detected at more than 20 different water sources in six schools.
In most of those cases the water source was shut off soon after the sample was analyzed, according to the data.
“The results are overwhelmingly, to me, good,” said Anthony Diaz, co-founder of the Newark Water Coalition and a regular critic of the city’s handling of its ongoing water crisis. “This helps people understand the magnitude of the problem. It’s not as crazy as we think. It’s not in every public school. The more information we have… is a good thing. But they don’t see it that way.”
Diaz is referring to city officials, who categorically deny lead in any of the schools’ drinking water, instead of releasing testing data, conceding there were issues in a small handful of cases and proving they’d addressed the issue.
“They see it as, ‘Any exceedance is only going..to hurt us.’” Diaz said. “They’re so busy controlling the story, they’re not worried about helping people. You can’t help people if they don’t have all the information...it goes back to the lack of transparency.”
Superintendent Roger León has been on the offensive in recent weeks, reassuring parents about water quality at the start of the school year and releasing some of this year’s test results to local publication Tap Into Newark. But schools where exceedances were detected were not provided to the publication.
State law requires school boards to notify parents, school staff and the state’s Department of Education any time a school’s drinking water exceeds federal guidelines.
But Valerie Wilson, the school board’s business manager, confirmed none of these things had happened in Newark in recent years. Since state law only requires them to test every six years and they were testing in surplus of that, they didn’t think they were required to notify anyone about exceedances, she said.
“Because we are ahead of the testing schedule, eventually we know we will have to determine how we do notifications and determine what we do,” Wilson said. “It's putting a plan and a protocol in place.”
Wilson said the board has been reluctant to post results because she wanted to make sure they were clear and understandable for parents, and was concerned they would cause alarm.
“The next piece is now when you have these exceedances, how do you report them responsibly so you don’t create panic for people,” Wilson said.
Kareem Adeem, center
On Monday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy proposed a change in rules that will require school districts to test drinking water every three years. Those results will be available on a centralized website maintained by the state. The State’s Education Department didn’t return multiple requests for comment.
After Water Department Director Adeem insisted no school had any lead exceedence at last week’s town hall event, WNYC/Gothamist asked him about the results of the 2019 testing data.
“You can exceed for any different thing,” he said. “The school does their own testing. Tonight I was saying that...to my knowledge, the school system didn’t have a lead exceedance. They don’t have lead service lines. They had lead fixtures, they turned off, they should have got rid off...If it was a problem I’m quite sure the Department of Education and the DEP would have been in the schools.”
New regulations kicked in to require more testing for the overall water systems starting in 2017. That’s the same year Newark’s water system first exceeded federal lead standards. An independent report by contractor CDM Smith eventually determined that the corrosion control inhibitor, a chemical meant to coat lead pipes to stop metal from leeching into drinking water, stopped working at the Pequannock Water Treatment Plant, likely due to a drop in pH levels in water treated there that began in 2012 and declined dramatically in 2016.
It’s not the first time Newark officials have offered misleading information about lead in drinking water. Starting in 2017, when the city first surpassed federal drinking water standards, the city conducted a public outreach campaign where officials released confusing statements like “NEWARK INFORMS RESIDENTS OF TWO ISSUES INVOLVING LEAD; NEITHER INVOLVES ANY DANGER TO RESIDENTS,” and the now-infamous 2018 press release headlined “NEWARK’S WATER IS ABSOLUTELY SAFE TO DRINK,” two days after the Natural Resources Defense Council threatened a lawsuit.
It wasn’t until fall of 2018, that Mayor Ras Baraka admitted to the breadth of the problem and began distributing water filters. But that was months after water department officials had been warned by an independent contractor about the potential for widespread issues, according to emails released in the ongoing litigation.
The city has since taken multiple steps to address its water crisis. This spring, Newark instituted a new water treatment plan that will start to coat lead pipes with a protective layer and should eventual lower lead levels in homes with lead service lines or fixtures. The city has resumed distribution of water filters to residents who live in affected areas, and bottled water is available for all pregnant women or families with kids under six years-old. In the long-term, a $120 million loan from Essex County will allow the city to replace all of its 18,000 lead service lines in under three years at no cost to residents.
Yvette Jordan, with the Newark Education Workers Caucus, a group suing the city along with the Natural Resources Defense Council for its handling of the ongoing drinking water issues, said she too had been awaiting the results of water testing in the schools. She described them as, “not as bad as we had anticipated.” And she said she wasn’t surprised that the Head of the Water Department head director, Kareem Adeem had offered a blanket statement about water in schools, while glossing over some trouble spots.
“It’s more of the same. It’s him supporting and echoing what the administration is saying over and over again,” Jordan said. “It’s like everything is fine, even if it really isn’t in certain places.”
This story was published in collaboration with Measure of America.
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