BY JENNIFER KOHLHEPP
Staff Writer
MILLSTONE — The township elementary school had to shut off all of its water, except for the toilets, last week.
In a letter sent home to parents on Nov. 2, Superintendent William Setaro stated that on Nov. 1 several water samples taken at the elementary school tested positive for bacteria. Since the middle school has a different system, its water was not compromised, according to Setaro.
“This did not cause an interruption in instruction at all,” Setaro said. “The teachers adapted very well.
“The building administration and the custodial maintenance staff,” he said, “did a great job maintaining the system when the problem arose, and keeping the situation under control.”
Setaro said the school has an outside testing company perform water tests once or twice a month for metal and bacteria levels.
“When we checked the water that Monday, it had a high bacteria count,” Setaro said.
In an effort to ensure accuracy regarding the school’s water tests, Setaro said, even if the water tests high for a pollutant, the school will retest it before calling the Board of Health.
“We rechecked the water again,” Setaro said, “and as soon as the results came back showing coliform, we called the Board of Health.”
Since coliform, which relates to E. coli, is a type of bacteria that if ingested could cause indigestion and diarrhea, Setaro said, the Board of Health told the district to shut off all the water and send a letter home with students notifying parents and guardians of the situation.
Setaro said that prior to letters going home to parents, the school did not receive any reports of students feeling ill. He said the school did receive a couple of complaints of a stomach virus after the letters went home, but as of then, he said, the water had been shut off.
“Our records indicate that we did not have any abnormal outbreaks,” Setaro said.
In addition to having the students drink bottled water, Setaro said, the district will provide waterless sanitizers for all the teachers and in every bathroom. Students and staff will use the waterless sanitizers to clean their hands after bathroom use as well as before and after lunch.
“We will continue with this procedure until we receive a negative reading,” Setaro said.
The toilets in the school will continue to operate regularly, according to Setaro.
In response to the positive testing for bacteria, the district will also chlorinate and flush the water system at the elementary school.
In the meantime, Setaro said the school will provide two gallons of bottled water to each classroom until the water tests clean. Any dishes, kitchen equipment or other materials that may require washing or water use will be handled at the middle school, Setaro said.
“Since the children have been using bottled water for the last several weeks, we do not feel that this will cause a disruption,” Setaro said.
When asked why students were already drinking bottled water, Setaro said, “Earlier in the year, the school was having work done on the plumbing because it had new classrooms added.
“During construction,” he said, “someone turned the wrong valve and water went into the tank, bypassing the filter system.”
Setaro said the higher level of iron in the water came as a result of the water coming out of the faucets directly from the pump.
“When the water comes directly from the pump, it doesn’t go through a softener, causing a high level of iron,” Setaro said.
Although students had access to bottled water in their classrooms because of the high iron content in the water, Setaro said, the district did not turn off the water completely at the elementary school until the latest incident.
“We didn’t turn the water off,” Setaro said, “but if a child went to drink water from a fountain, the water would have smelled yucky and tasted horrible.”
Once the school discovered the high iron content, it backwashed the water system daily with chlorinated water to clean it.
“We were happy to see the iron count dropping from .03 percent to .02 percent,” Setaro said.
The initial level of iron found in the water was .06, according to Setaro. He said the state does not have a standard in terms of how much iron should be in schools’ water systems.
In the process of fixing the high iron content in the water, Setaro said, the district realized it had to replace the water pump, a submerged part of the plumbing system at the end of the well.
“They had to pull all of the pipes out of the ground in that part of the system,” Setaro said.
Setaro said the pipes were laid on the ground. Although the pipes need to be chlorinated and cleaned once they are put back into the ground, Setaro said, some bacteria from the ground must have remained in the pipes once they were replaced, according to Setaro.
The entire water system was chlorinated and cleaned on Friday, according to Setaro.
“That should kill all of the bacteria,” Setaro said.
Earlier this year, the elementary school had problems with sewage backing up in its sewer lines.
Upon investigating, school officials discovered that one of the sewage pipes had not been soldered together correctly. Toilet paper and other materials were getting caught on the rough edges of the pipe.
Setaro said the school took care of the sewer problem over the summer and had the rough edges of the pipe taken off with a rotor-rooter device.
Setaro also recalled that the school water had tested positive for bacteria in 2000.
“The bacteria showed up in a sink in an area where they wash dishes,” Setaro said.
At that time, according to Setaro, school officials hired a company that came in to teach school workers how to properly maintain the faucet in order to keep it clean.