A new report says tests show that 70% of Monroe County schools have at least one drinking water fixture with lead levels that exceed the state's limit. Across the state, that figure was 42%.
The report, from Environment America Research and Policy Center and NYPIRG, was based on testing data posted to the state health department's website and covers schools in every county in New York. It noted that lead in school drinking water is a statewide problem — and a nationwide one — and did not single out any district or school in Monroe County.
"I think one important finding from our report is that lead contamination — it doesn't know political boundaries or school district boundaries," said David Masur, senior advocate in New York state for Environment America. "Lead contamination is not just an urban school issue. We're seeing that lead contamination in school water is common in cities. It's common in rural areas. It's even common in affluent suburbs. "
The report also argues that the the "test and fix" approach laid out in state law is inadequate. It urges state policymakers to instead require districts to install filtered fountains and fixtures.
A decade ago, New York began requiring public schools to test the drinking water from outlets such as fountains for the presence of lead and to disclose when the results exceed the set standard. In 2022, lawmakers updated the standard to five parts per billion, though it is widely accepted that there is no safe level of lead exposure for young people.
Since the law first went into effect, many school districts across the state have "undertaken some form or another of lead remediation," the report said. But many of those schools still detect lead in the drinking water coming out of faucets and fountains.
Generally, that lead contamination is not coming from the municipal source water or the service lines feeding into the schools, Masur said.
"Most of this lead comes from everything behind the walls, soldering in the pipes, valves, gauges, screens, even the drinking fountain components themselves have elevated levels of lead in many cases, and so you have all those points for lead to get into the water," he added.
That's why the organization is calling on the state to instead focus on filtered fixtures for drinking and cooking water and to provide districts with sufficient money to install and maintain that equipment.
"The idea is a fairly simple one," Masur said. "You remove that old drinking fountain in the wall, and you replace it with a certified lead-filtering water bottle filling station or lead-filtering hydration station, and that way you make sure when the water is coming out of that device, it's absolutely clean and has caught any of the lead that come from could come from any of those potential multiple sources behind the wall."
That's what Pittsburgh's school system did between 2016 and 2024.
Over the reporting period covering 2023-25, 102 out of Monroe County's 146 schools had at least one "outlet" where tests of drinking water showed lead levels that exceeded the standard, according to the report. That amounted to 1,069 outlets that didn't meet the standard. The report does not state how many have been removed, replaced, or addressed in some manner.
