Last year, New Hampshire tightened limits on lead in drinking water at schools and child care centers, and required them to deal with faucets or drinking fountains that had tested above those limits in the past.
A new report from the state Department of Environmental Services shows how those efforts are going.
The 2022 law dropped the threshold for action from 15 parts per billion – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standard – to 5 parts per billion.
Most tests between 2016 and 2023 were below that new standard, according to the data, which covers results from more than 23,000 water outlets. The majority, in fact, detected no lead. But about 15% of results from schools and 6% of results from child care centers were high enough to trigger action.
The department’s report says schools and child care programs typically dealt with that by permanently removing the outlet from service. In other cases, they replaced fixtures, added filtration or had plumbing work done.
Three out of every five schools, and one out of every five child care programs, had at least one outlet test above 5 parts per billion.
The Department of Environmental Services says lead does not occur naturally in the state’s drinking water, but can come from corroding pipes or fixtures.
Test results by school and child care facility are available on the department’s website. Two additional rounds of testing are required by June 2024.
New Hampshire’s Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund has given public and private schools $1.6 million in remediation grants. State environmental officials are also working with the Department of Health and Human Services to create a grant program for child care centers.
