Despite Health Concerns, Newark School District Denied Funds To Address Lead

Earlier this year, Newark, NJ, Mayor Ras Baraka's addressed the city's school water contamination crisis. During his second State of the City address, Baraka said that he wanted a permanent solution.

While news of lead-contaminated water throughout the Newark school district was made known in March, the City of Newark and its environmental justice communities have had problems for some time with how to address the problem, according to NRDC.

The district, which according to Politico is the state’s largest school district, has had elevated levels of lead in the drinking water since around 2012. The district also has the distinction of having the greatest number of lead-poisoned children in New Jersey.

According to NRDC, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection released a statement indicating that “after the Newark Public School district’s annual testing of water taps, 30 schools recorded levels of lead above the federal action level set by the U.S. EPA in March, at 15 ppb.”

Since then, the annual water testing data from the Newark Public Schools district has been released dating back to 2010, NRDC reported.

"Our students' health is in jeopardy. There is nothing wrong with Newark's water, but there is something wrong with our infrastructure. It is old," Baraka told NJ.com. "We don't want to send our children bottled water for the next 20 years, and we don't just want filters on water-use sights."

Baraka was then responding to the news that nearly half of Newark schools had been using water contaminated with dangerous levels of lead.

According to Joseph Della Fave, executive director of the Ironbound Community Corporation, “Children in Newark face multiple health challenges due to cumulative impacts from environmental burdens, including poor air quality causing asthma and lost school time. This lead issue further endangers the health of our children and, as parents have demanded, must be confronted and corrected.”

A collective letter, sent in collaboration with the Ironbound Community Corporation and other groups in Newark, demand “that the New Jersey State Department of Education and Schools Development Authority reverse the agencies' recent determination that a lead filtration system in Newark’s public schools would not be eligible for funding intended to make repairs in schools under State takeover.”

The Philadelphia School District recently decided to expand its drinking water program after detecting high levels of lead in nearly 50 school drinking outlets.

This past August, the district originally announced that it would reevaluate drinking water outlets for lead concentration levels in just 40 schools throughout Philadelphia. NewsWorks.org reported that the district now plans to test the water at each of its 200-plus schools over the next 18 months.