Detroit schools turn off water, citing lead, copper

When public school students in Detroit return to their classrooms next week for the first day of the school year, the water fountains will be dry.

Since 2016, water testing in the district has found elevated levels of lead or copper in dozens of schools. And while it is unclear how many of the district’s 106 schools currently have water quality issues, the drinking water will be turned off in all of them, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said Wednesday.

The latest round of water quality tests was conducted this year and the results for 24 schools came in last week.

Of those, 16 had at least one water source with elevated levels of lead, copper or both. That, coupled with testing results from 2016, brought the total number of schools with known water issues to 34.

It could take one more month for all of the schools’ test results to come back, Vitti said. He decided not to wait.

“Now that we’re seeing these higher levels of lead and copper, there’s no need to roll the dice,” he said of his decision to shut off the drinking water in all of the district’s public schools.

He added that he had seen no indication that any students had suffered health problems because of the water.

The district had already shut off drinking water at certain schools because of concerns about lead and copper levels.

He said that students would still be able to wash their hands and flush the toilets, but that drinking water would come from water bottles and water coolers rather than fountains or sinks.

In a joint statement, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and the Great Lakes Water Authority, which serves customers in several counties including Detroit’s, said city residents were not affected by the schools’ water quality issues.

It said that “aging school infrastructure,” such as old plumbing, could be the source of the problem.