Lead in Drinking Water Possibility Flagged to School Superintendent Months Ago

Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith was told that testing would be done for elevated levels of lead in drinking water at Rose City Park Elementary School in March - two months before she found out what the results were.

The results, which were finally released at the end of May, showed the presence of lead at levels twice the Environmental Protection Agency-mandated maximum.

The revelation that there were elevated levels of lead at both Rose City Park and Creston Elementary set off a cascade of disclosures, including that some district officials had known for years of lead level problems at dozens of Portland Public Schools' facilities.

As a result, the school board has hired the law firm Stoll Reves to conduct an investigation into who knew what when, and two top school officials - Chief Operating Officer Tony Magliano and the district’s senior manager for environmental health and safety, Andy Fridley - were placed on leave.

Smith has received the support of the board over the past two weeks in no small part because she had maintained that she did not know of the elevated levels until May 25 when she was told of the test results at the two elementary schools.

It now turns out that while there is no indication that Smith knew of the test results before May 25, she appears to have been told that the district planned to test for lead at Rose City Park in March.

That’s one of several disclosures in nearly 1,000 pages of emails released by Portland Public Schools in response to public records requests.

On March 22, Smith’s chief of staff Amanda Whalen forwarded her an email chain that started with Fridley stating the district would be spending about $1,000 to conduct 50 tests at Rose City Park.

“We are sampling all drinking fountains and sinks that are located in classrooms (and the kitchen) at Rose City Park ES,” Fridley had written Whalen. “This is in response to concerns raised by parents.”

Whalen asked if they were only testing for lead.

Fridley said yes.

Whalen then asked for a link to the lead testing results the district had received in 2001.

Fridley forwarded the link.

Whalen then forwarded the email chain to Smith.

In the pages released by the district, there is no reply or acknowledgment from Smith. It’s also not clear if she conducted any follow-up until receiving the results at the end of May.

What is clear from the emails is that the district received the results of the lead testing on March 31, and despite the fact the levels were nearly twice what the EPA says is the maximum acceptable level, Fridley did not order the water turned off and bottled water - or any other water - brought in.

Another thing that is clear is that the Rose City Park Elementary School parent who originally requested the testing was given the alarming results soon after they came in. She apparently expected the results to be shared with parents.

By April 11, that had not had happened, and she wrote to school officials urging them to make the news public because it would be better coming from them.

“I feel like I need to let parents know what I know,” she wrote. “PR-wise, it would sure look better if the information were first disseminated by you. I encourage you to at least post the water results today.”

That would not happen for more than six weeks.

The emails released by the district also contain several in which Fridley conveys misinformation about lead safety and others in which he is dismissive of the need for testing.

“Where we have spot tested at other schools we have found levels at or below the clearance sample test results from 2001,” Fridley wrote to a parent of a student at Creston Elementary in February.

The truth was that the since 2009 the district had found more than 150 drinking fountains and sinks in more than 50 district buildings with levels of lead above the EPA maximum.

In that same email, Fridley told the parent, “there is no plan or need to do full scale testing at Creston. The contaminates (lead and copper), if present, come from the system piping. If they are not present in the initial testing there is no reason to believe they will be in the future.”

As it turned out, when Creston was tested one month later, elevated lead levels were discovered.

It is clear from the emails that Fridley did tell his direct supervisor, David Hobbs, the senior director of facilities and assets management, about the elevated lead levels.

But it does not appear that Hobbs told his supervisor.

In April, Magliano emailed Fridley, asking, “Did we get the results back?”

The emails also show that once the higher-ups at Portland Public Schools were finally made aware of the results at the end of the May, they reached out to the Beaverton School District which had disclosed elevated lead results at two schools a couple of weeks earlier.

One group that was not informed immediately were members of the school board. They were told by email hours after parents and staff were notified of the situation. That did not sit well with some board members.

“I was surprised yesterday that the board was notified three hours after the email was sent to parents, rather than given advance warning,” board member Mike Rosen wrote. “Especially given that this problem was identified two months ago.”

Smith has maintained that she immediately swung into action once she was notified of the results on May 25. But It was still more than 24 hours before the water fountains and sinks were shut down.

Meanwhile, late Thursday, Oregon’s legislative leaders - in a bipartisan move - released a statement saying they would help school districts across the state find money for lead testing. Currently only about 10 percent of the districts in the state have tested for lead.

“Making sure students are drinking safe water in school is our top priority,” said the statement from Senate leaders Peter Courtney, Ginny Burdock and Ted Ferrioli and House leaders Tina Kotek, Jennifer Williamson and Mike McLane.

“We need to know the extent of the problem now. If school districts lack the funds to immediately test for lead contamination, the Legislature's Emergency Board must be ready step in and make sure all students have safe drinking water as soon as possible."

That statement follows a recommendation Wednesday from the Oregon Department of Education and Oregon Health Authority that all school districts and child care centers test for lead as soon as possible