Children have a right to water in American schools, but is the water enough?

christina Hecht remembers how water got into the school lunch bill because the process was unusually simple. In the mid-2000s, a researcher toured school cafeterias in California and wondered, “What do these kids have to do if they want to drink water?” said Hecht, a policy advisor at the University of California Nutrition Policy Institute.

At that time 40% of the state schools failed to offer free water in their cafeterias. That fact eventually reached then-governor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, who moved to succeed SB 1413 requiring schools to provide free fresh water during meals. Advocates then used California’s example to convince U.S. senators working on the 2010s Healthy, Hunger-Free Children Act (HHFKA) – a federal package that establishes nutrition standards and food financing for public schools and child care centers – to also add drinking water to that legislation.

For example, water was on the menu nationally – although scattered and sometimes contradictory data make it difficult to assess how well that legislation actually worked. A 2016 study by researcher Erica Kenney and her colleagues found that half of Massachusetts middle and high schools failed to comply with both federal and state policies regarding access to drinking water. However, a 2019 national study conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 95% of the 1,257 schools surveyed were in compliance with the HHFKA drinking water mandate.

Yet experts say that 14 years after the introduction of the HHFKA, many schools still do not meet drinking water requirements. There is no federal standard for how schools should address access to drinking water. States therefore have to figure out how to improve this themselves, which leads to a patchwork of water availability and policy. Many school and daycare centers are also struggling with elevated lead levels in the water coming from their taps, which also means they are not meeting the drinking requirements of the legislation. That leaves significant gaps in what researchers call “effective access” to safe water for children on school grounds, which has health implications: for example, underhydrated children are less able to concentrate or perform at their best.

Kenney, who studies child nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, says schools are using a variety of strategies to get free drinking water into the cafeterias and classrooms where children eat. Some buy office-style water coolers. Others offer bottled water. Some are adding filtered bottle filling stations to existing water fountains. Still others place cups and pitchers on cafeteria tables.

Then there are schools that have not yet made any changes. Although the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the school lunch program, allows nutrition directors to use it general lunch funds to pay for cheap cups and jugs administrators have to be creative to fund more expensive dispensers, bottle fillers or new fountains – sometimes by taking money from wellness or athletic programs or by asking parent-teacher associations to raise money.

The USDA survey seems to indicate that most schools have covered this ground adequately. However, that survey was based in part on a checklist in which food directors specified whether there was a fountain, free bottled water, a cooler or a pitcher in or within 20 feet of cafeterias. According to Hecht, such a format exists – which leaves no room to include important additional details – fails to inquire about the condition of those water sources or the quality of the water. In cases where students have participated in surveys, they have complained about dirty, broken fountains with poor flow and unappealing hot water.

And while the USDA data shows that the water served at lunch is “potable,” that doesn’t mean schools are testing it for lead contamination. In fact, lead is prevalent in the aging pipes of schools and childcare centers across the country and, as a result, is often found in drinking water from fountains. A 2022 study found that between 13% and 81% of the 5,688 schools surveyed in seven states had lead levels above 5 parts per billion (ppb) in 2018, and that 82% of schools in the state of New York had one or more taps with lead water of more than 15 ppb in the same year. For reference: the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 1ppb as the highest amount allowed in school fountains.

With many schools reporting fountains as their primary water source, the Guardian asked the USDA how they could determine that they were lead-free. In an email, a spokesperson responded that “drinking water standards, that is, drinking water that is safe for consumption, are regulated and enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency.” The EPA, in turn, claimed in an email from a spokesperson that it “does not have the authority … to require schools and child care facilities that are not regulated as public water systems to take lead remediation measures.”

Such responses from federal agencies are a pattern, according to Cori Bell, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Coalition (NRDC). She said: “They’re all throwing their hands up and saying, ‘It’s not my job to give kids clean drinking water.'”

Without clear federal guidance or oversight, states are addressing leading issues with their own widely varied protocols. Twenty-three states, including Nevada, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Michigan (home of the Flint water crisis), have no laws requiring lead testing in schools. Others, such as Illinois, have laws to test for lead levels, but not to reduce lead levels or remove it from affected properties.

Ensuring the absence of lead in school water should absolutely fall under the EPA’s purview, Bell said. The agency has the authority “to require water systems to take certain actions, and it is our position that it can require water systems to take action in schools.” She and other experts hope that the 1991 EPA lead and copper rulewhich is currently being updated and should be completed later this year, could be another suitable tool to regulate school water.

Bell said the proposed improvements as currently written are “bland” and “just totally disappointing … leaving schools and child care centers behind.” The only force currently pushing the rule is a provision mandating that offer lead testing to 20% of their schools and childcare facilities annually. It should give them guidance on what the EPA is “3Ts”: train, test and take action. Testing would be free, but also voluntary. Many educational sites are already opting for this, for fear that they will have to pay for expensive repairs.

In recent years, federal assistance has eased some of the burden of paying for lead contamination cleanup. The Biden administration has provided $15 billion Bipartisan infrastructure bill to replace mainline service lines, and federal subsidies under the Water infrastructure improvements for the nation (Wiin) Act gave states $58 million to replace lead pipes and hardware, specifically in schools and daycares in 2022 and 2023. But that’s not nearly enough to address lead problems in every facility, experts say.

The NRDC has advocated for improvements to the EPA’s lead and copper regulations to require lead testing for all schools and daycares twice a year, with mandatory lead abatement for facilities with levels above 1 ppb. It has also pushed for what appears to be a cheaper alternative: the addition of filters on every tap, to ensure children are not additionally exposed through food cooked in the school kitchen or fountains outside the cafeteria. Hecht, from the University of California, also said drinking water should be available in all school buildings to better ensure safe hydration.

However, she pushed back on the NRDC’s push for filter-first legislation due to costs and maintenance needs; Replacing filters can also be expensive and time-consuming. She would like to see more schools follow the example of Chicago Public Schools, which rigorously test and flush faucets to remove any lead that may have built up in the pipes during class-free weekends and holidays.

But for now, experts say they would welcome any federal mandate around lead testing and remediation because as things stand, Bell said, “the agencies we expect to protect children in school and childcare are simply putting on blinders.” regarding this problem”.

Reporting for this piece was supported by the Nova Institute for Health