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Polk County schools continue to testing for lead in water

The district took water samples from five more schools last Friday and planned to take samples from another five schools on Tuesday.

BARTOW, Fla. -- Officials in Polk County said they were hoping to have some definitive answers Monday on tests that were done for lead in water samples taken from a handful of schools in the district.

While they did get some answers, a lot of questions still lingered.

Monday was supposed to be the day results from follow-up tests at Union Academy and Winston Academy would be available. Union Academy, which had tested positive for small amounts of lead on four fixtures, is now in the clear after repairs were made. District officials were hoping to scratch Winston Academy off the list as well but had to wait for results from a re-test on one sink in that building.

PREVIOUS:Polk County school board members say district will address lead in water

“That sink was out of service and when the replacement of all the components were changed our plumber inadvertently left the faucet off, so the water laid dormant until the consultant showed up to draw the sample,” said Polk County Schools Maintenance Services Manager Roy Luce. “He noticed in his report that there was a reddish-brown color to the water, he still pulled a sample and sent it off to the lab and it came back 20 parts-per-billion which, according to the EPA, is still safe but we’ve adopted 15 parts-per-billion so we conducted a proper test the next day and we’re waiting for that sample to return.”

Next up: Testing the rest of the schools in the district, which is 150 schools in total. With an average cost of $1,000 to test each school, the district will likely spend $150,000 on testing along. That amount doesn’t include any repair costs.

“A lot of our schools are really old but we’ve tested some old schools,” said Luce. “We had things come up in each building but they were ones and twos in each building, it wasn’t systemic across the entire campus and the other ones that we’ve tested have been the same. We’ve had one or two devices at a school so there’s no indication that there’s any widespread contamination.”

“The tests will be whatever they are,” he added. “We’ve worked through the five schools initially, we know how we’re going to address the problems, we’ve been very successful on the five schools that we have tested so we’re extremely confident that we can work through this process as quickly as possible to where we can give the schools the ‘all-clear’.”

MORE: After lead re-testing, Polk County schools still find elevated levels

Luce said the district took water samples from five more schools last Friday and planned to take samples from another five schools on Tuesday. They hope to have all 150 schools in the district tested by mid-January.

To see the results as they become available, just click here.

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