WATCH: Lead water levels unsafe in Germantown schools as kids prepare to go back for new year WATCH: Lead water levels unsafe in Germantown schools as kids prepare to go back for new year
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Concerns heading into the first day of school in Germantown after the school district announced unacceptable lead levels in the water.
The two schools affected so far - are Riverdale School and Houston High School.
Riverdale had three sinks affected and Houston High School has a total of 22 sinks.
“Parents wanna know that no matter what, at any entry point where my baby is accessing water, is that it’s lead-free,” said Black Millenials 4 Flint president Latricea Adams.
The emails list the different locations of these sinks and note that Riverdale had a total of 3 affected out of 198 water sources tested or about 1%.
Houston High School has 22 affected out of the 369 sources tested.
The school district said it does not plan to turn off these sources because they’re not traditional sources of drinking water, but they will put signage up saying not to drink from them.
Adams said that may not be enough.
“Children are gonna drink water wherever they can get it, they’re children, they don’t operate like adults.”
She said from her experience, working with lead problems in homes, schools, and more in Flint, Baltimore, and Memphis, she says there are only a number of solutions that can be effective.
“The best solution in those instances where there’s lead leaking into the water, there are two solutions, one is cost-effective, cost-efficient is just turning the source off or even removing the source and starting again. Then there are filters,” she said.
As of Sunday night, FOX13 only knows of these two schools but there could be more.
Germantown Schools said all fountains and water fill-up stations, drinking water sources, were not found to have high lead levels.
The full list of sinks affected in Riverdale:
Sinks affected in Houston High School:
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