Water Testing Information for Families & Community
Important Update – April 2020
There have been a number of news stories throughout the country about high levels of lead in school drinking water. Hillsborough County Public Schools is making proactive efforts to ensure the water our students and staff drink is safe for consumption.
Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) started voluntary water testing in March 2017. To date, our district has tested 11,595 individual faucets, drinking fountains and fixtures where water is potentially used for drinking or cooking, in all 270 of our schools and district sites, across our 1,000 square-mile county. During this initial phase of testing, less than 2% of samples taken came back above the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) action level of 15 parts per billion (ppb).
While students and staff continue with eLearning, our dedicated maintenance crew will be taking water samples from the 207 fixtures that were mitigated during the 2018-2019 school year. This testing phase will be completed prior to June 30, 2020. We will be posting test results on this webpage as they become available: Hillsboroughschools.org/watertesting.
A comprehensive resampling from all of our sites will begin in August of the 2020-2021 school year, with one-third of our sites being tested triennially. This voluntary program goes above and beyond the requirements of the LCR, ensuring 100% of all fixtures tested are below the 15ppb.
Under this voluntary program, any fixture with lead concentrations higher than 15ppb will immediately be taken out of service. Mitigation measures will be taken to correct the issue, which may include replacing the fixture, supply lines, valves, and/or piping. The fixture will be retested to ensure levels are below the 15ppb threshold before putting it back into service.
In addition to voluntary testing, our district has always complied with the Environmental Protection Agency’s LCR at the eleven school sites where we manufacture the drinking water. The EPA requires public water systems to perform routine water quality testing to ensure that the water they are providing their customers meets state and federal standards.
Please note that charter and private schools are independently managed and therefore are not part of this testing program.
If you have any questions about the testing or results as we receive them, please refer to this page. You can also contact our Maintenance team to ask a question. Thank you for your continued support as we take steps to enhance safety on our campuses.
Water Testing Results
Below are the results of our district’s voluntary water testing for lead in drinking water at fixtures in schools and district sites. Of the 11,595 fixtures tested, we mitigated 207 fixtures that tested above our district’s guidelines. We are re-testing these fixtures starting in April 2020 and results will be posted here as that come in from the lab. Please know that when we find any lead concentrations above the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) action level of 15ppb, we are committed to addressing each one of them immediately. Any fixture found to have lead levels of 15ppb or higher is immediately taken out of operation and is not used again until the fixture tests below 15ppb.
Federal guidelines outlined in the LCR, requires our district to perform routine water quality testing at eleven school sites where we manufacture the drinking water. All other schools and district sites acquire their water from local municipalities that are required to comply with the LCR.
Your child’s health and safety are our top priority. If you have health concerns, contact your health care provider or the Florida Department of Health in Hillsborough County at (813) 307-8000.
In the results below, all issues have been corrected and re-tested to ensure compliance except for any marked with a *, which indicates a fixture that is currently out of service and in the process of being corrected.
If you have any questions about the testing or results, please see our Frequently Asked Questions page. You can also contact our Maintenance team to ask a question. Thank you for your continued support as we take steps to enhance safety on our campuses.
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