All CHS bathrooms now contain two stickers warning students to not drink the water directly from the faucets because the faucet water is not drawn from the same reservoir as the water fountains, and is not filtrated.

The stickers were recently placed in restrooms as part of an awareness initiative from MCPS to prevent students from drinking water from sources that are potentially unclean.

“[The sources] were not intended for providing [drinkable] water but for hand washing, so it was an awareness measure primarily,” said Sean Gallagher, assistant director to the Department of Facilities and Management.

According to Gallagher, the water drawn from the faucets in department offices are filtrated and drinkable.

Between July 2004 and April 2005, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) sampled 260 drinking water sources from CHS faucets, fountains and coolers to determine and record their lead content. MCPS additionally sampled 87 water sources such as science laboratory and restroom fixtures not typically used for drinking.

“From the sampling, MCPS identified four out of the 347 sources needing remediation,” Gallager said.  “After replacing [and or] removing the four fixtures, MCPS re-sampled the water and found acceptable water quality [in all of them].”

Three of the water sources were identified as not meeting the Department of Health and Human Services standards and were replaced. One was removed entirely because of its lack of usage.

“[Lead testing] is a very expensive program that we’ve done to do all schools,” Gallagher said.  “I don’t believe that the health department is asking us to do ongoing testing, because once we’ve gone thorough the protocols, we were able to resolve the issue.”