Castro Valley Unified School District

From November 13-17, 2023, we conducted lead testing on all drinking fountains and bottle filling stations districtwide.  Of the 272 drinking fountains tested, 10 fountains were over the normal recommended range of 15 parts per billion (ppb). California’s lead testing law does not require extensive testing at schools.  Schools are only required to test one to five water sources to comply with the new law, regardless of how many outlets they have.

After receiving the results, fountains that were above actionable levels were taken out of service immediately.  This ensured that students and staff were not able to access the fountains until corrective action could be taken.  Maintenance staff removed the fountains from service by turning off the water supply and communicated the status to the principals at the impacted sites.  Similar to what we’ve done in the past, a plan for remediation to get those stations back in working order is underway by replacing fountains that have failed.  Once this is completed, we will have them retested to ensure they are below actionable levels before putting them back into service.

Over the last several years, there has been an effort to add filtered bottle filling stations wherever possible.  By installing several each year, to date, 45 bottle filling stations have been installed around the district.

Here is the most current report

From November 13th to 17th 2023, CVUSD conducted lead testing on all drinking fountains and bottle filling stations districtwide.  Of the 272 drinking fountains tested, 31 drinking fountains tested above actionable levels for lead.  Maintenance staff have removed the fountains from service by turning off the water supply until corrective action can be taken.  Once the fountains are replaced, and the system flushed, the 31 fountains will be retested to ensure they are safe for drinking prior to being turned back on for student and staff use. 

Over the last several years, there has been a concerted effort to add filtered bottle filling stations wherever possible throughout the district.  By installing several each year, to date, 45 bottle filling stations have been installed around the district.  There are currently additional bottle filling stations already scheduled to be installed over the coming months.  Moving forward, CVUSD remains committed to continuing to work towards expanding access to filtered bottle filling stations across the district.

The Castro Valley Unified School District began our annual water testing on October 28th 2019. We tested between 5 and 10 fountains/faucets at each campus. To date we have conducted 266 sampling of 133 fountains/faucets (per and post flush as mandated) identified 3 fixtures that were at or above actionable levels. All three fixtures were immediately taken out of service and replaced as well as angle stops and fittings. Retesting of the three fixtures returned 2 fixtures as below actionable levels and 1 remaining fixture at or above actionable levels. The one remaining fixture is out of service as we await the test result from the sampling taken on 1/16/2020. We are confident those results will come back below actionable levels. Please see the attached results.

On January 21st CVUSD received the results of the remaining fixture (faucet) with actionable results. We are excited to report that the replacement of the faucet resulted in the water samples coming back below actionable levels.

All fixtures tested in our annual water sampling are either below actionable levels but in most cases below detectable levels.

View the PDF with the most current test results here.