Clayton County Schools said Friday it has hired a Tampa-based environmental consulting firm to conduct lead and copper testing of drinking water in the district.
GLE Associates, Inc., which has an office in Atlanta, will begin inspecting the water this month and continue throughout the year. Testing will take place before and after school operating hours, on weekends and on days when the district is officially closed, the school system said in a release.
The district is one of many across metro Atlanta that has decided to test its water because of the crisis exposed in Flint, Mich., three years ago, though school systems are not required to by law to test unless operating their own water systems.
Atlanta, Fulton and DeKalb County schools systems tested their water over the past two years, with DeKalb finding elevated lead in almost half of the district's school buildings. (Fulton also found elevated levels.)
In interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year, Gwinnett Schools officials said the district did some spot checking and found no issues. Cobb, on the other hand, gave conflicting answers as to whether it had done any testing.
Clayton Superintendent Morcease J. Beasley said the district was pleased “to be moving forward in this process as we continue to ensure that our school environments are safe and conducive to our commitment to high performance in every way.
“Our students and employees deserve to attend as well as work at the best schools we can offer and contracting GLE is just one of several ways we are working to provide that environment,” he said.
In other Clayton news:
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