Texas will soon begin a program to test drinking water in thousands of elementary schools and child care facilities across the state following an update to federal standards on lead and copper exposure.
The change comes in the aftermath of the Flint, Michigan, water crisis that began in 2014. Michigan had switched the community’s water source to the Flint River but failed to properly treat the water to ensure it did not corrode the pipes. Lead and other contaminants leached into the predominantly Black community’s water supply as a result, a problem that went ignored for more than a year.
In one of the last actions by a Trump-led Environmental Protection Agency, the December update to the 1991 federal rule on reducing lead and copper in drinking water — which hadn’t been updated in decades — requires water utilities to test water at elementary schools and child care facilities. The rule also lowers the threshold for doing corrosion control treatments on pipes and replacing lines that contain lead.
