manages DEQ’s new monitoring ….

manages DEQ’s new monitoring program, said he’s still reaching out to schools that haven’t finished sending in water samples. “This rule rolled out right as COVID hit,” Montgomery said. “And schools have also had a lot of turnover. I’ll get calls from new facility people saying they just heard about the program and how do they get started.”

Although DEQ helps oversee the program, the rule’s enforcement falls to DPHHS. Ebelt said the deadline was set before the pandemic and COVID slowed that work for many schools.

He said a total of 308 schools had submitted an inventory of their buildings’ plumbing fixtures and more samples had been coming in. As of Feb. 28, 293 schools had provided samples. Not all results have been posted.

“We plan to be flexible with the deadline and will continue to work with schools,” Ebelt said.

Classroom and bathroom sinks were more likely than any other type of fixture to have high levels of lead. Of all the drinking fountains tested, 20% tested high enough to need flushing or get turned off, according to state environmental officials. Schools don’t have a deadline to make repairs, though some have taken anything whose water tested over 5 ppb out of service. Nationwide, no one has tracked how many lead pipes deliver water to homes, schools, and businesses, let alone tested every faucet for traces of the neurotoxin. At least seven states — California, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire and Virginia — require school districts to test for lead and report elevated levels to parents, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Last year, Washington state mandated that schools test drinking water for lead if the buildings went up or pipes went in before 2016. And in 2020, Virginia lawmakers instructed school boards to submit plans to test for lead and to make fixes if needed.

Patrick, with Great Falls Public Schools, said that in some cases, the district brought in water bottle fill stations with filters to replace old hallway drinking fountains. The district already had plans to use part of the proceeds from a bond issuance to replace the internal piping at Lewis and Clark Elementary School, where 23 fixtures had lead levels of 5 ppb or higher.

He said that the district had considered testing in the past but that the estimated cost was too high. With the new rule, the state covers the cost of lab tests and supplies for taking samples.

However, if repairs are needed, many schools may be left to foot the bill themselves. The state set aside $40,000 to help schools fix problems, but that money is first come, first served. As of Feb. 18, about $15,000 remained.

Patrick said that as schools calculate total repair costs, they’re submitting that information to state officials. He hopes that more than $40,000 will be set aside for repair projects the next time schools submit samples. For now, the gap in funding may mean delaying other projects. “It just means a project that we’re going to do, like re-asphalting part of a playground or something like that, gets postponed for another year,” he said.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed late last year included $55 billion to expand access to clean drinking water. But the money hasn’t been disbursed to states yet, it’s not limited to school repairs, and how much of that funding will land in Montana isn’t clear yet.

Montgomery, of DEQ , said that if schools don’t have the money to make fixes, some may qualify for rural development grants or low-interest loans.

In Troy, 27 of the 58 water fixtures tested at the elementary school came back above the state’s allowed limit of less than 5 ppb, with five in the red. The rural school district now faces the cost of repairing those water sources after incurring the hidden cost of the staff time it takes to inventory and sample every water source — no small expense for a small district with limited cash and workers.

“We’re just going to chip away at it with the general funds that we do have, and there may be some areas that we just shut down different water sources too,” said Jacob Francom, superintendent of Troy Public Schools. “Fixtures are very expensive — and testing regularly, I mean, it starts to add up.