Parents of children in Ottawa's public school system say they were alarmed and confused after the board turned off hundreds of classroom fountains at its schools without an explanation.
Megan McNeill-McKinnell said it made parents wonder what was wrong with the water.
"You know there are lead issues in the area, so you start to think about what has been happening, how long has it been going on for, and how come we didn't get any information about it?" she said Thursday.
Denise Inglis had similar worries when her six-year-old daughter told her the classroom fountains had been closed at Hopewell Avenue Public School.
In fact, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board said there is nothing wrong with the water. It closed the fountains because it does not have enough custodial staff to flush all the fountains daily as recommended by new provincial regulations, said board chair Rob Campbell.
The regulations also make it mandatory to flush all drinking fountains daily even at newly-built schools that don't have lead piping and don't show elevated levels of lead in their pipes.
Some parents such as Colette Stober, said they wondered why a teacher couldn't flush the water fountain.
"Or maybe even a kid could have that job once a day to …you know, teach them responsibility," said Stober, who has a child at Hopewell Avenue Public School.
Campbell said provincial rules make that difficult.
"It has to be logged, the logs have to be submitted and collated," he said. "This is a very bureaucratic process and position. So I don't know if we want to legally encumber students in our classrooms."
Keith West, Ontario's chief drinking water inspector, confirmed the province will require that schools keep records and will be implementing a compliance strategy, but did not elaborate.
When asked why even new schools without elevated lead levels or lead piping need to flush their fountains, he said the intention of the law is to protect the public health of Ontario's most vulnerable population.
Even for schools built after 1990, "there are instances where you might get some elevated levels of lead," he said, and the regulation applies to them as a precaution.
"And certainly [it's] my recommendation that the flushing be done on the daily basis," he said.
Officials at Ottawa's Catholic School Board told CBC on Friday that their custodians are flushing both taps and water fountains and there's been no disruption in service.
The provincial government announced the new water regulations in June after Ontario's chief drinking water inspector learned water in 16 of 36 communities tested showed higher than allowable lead levels in the taps of some homes. It later tightened them to include schools built after 1990.
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