In a narrow vote, the House Education Committee on Wednesday advanced legislation to test for lead in the water at Vermont’s schools and child care centers, but the bill departs in significant ways from a Senate-passed version of the measure.
Testing for lead has emerged as a key priority this session for lawmakers and Gov. Phil Scott, who proposed funding to test for lead at all of Vermont’s schools within the current year during his inaugural address. The Senate moved quickly to introduce and pass legislation, but the process has slowed in the House, where lawmakers have lingered over the bill in committee for weeks.
The upper chamber had favored an aggressive approach, asking all schools and child care centers to test for lead by the end of the year. It also set the action level – the threshold at which remediation must take place – at 3 parts per billion, a much stricter standard than the EPA’s action level of 15 ppb. It set aside $2.5 million to pay for an estimated 50% of the costs to remediate.
House lawmakers have taken a different tack. As advanced by the House Education Committee on a 6-5 vote, S.40 raises the action level to 5 parts per billion and gives schools and child care centers until Dec. 31, 2020, to complete a first round of testing.
As written, the bill also promises the state will reimburse a flat amount based on whatever remediation is necessary. For each drinking fountain a school must replace, for example, S.40 commits the state to paying $1,849. The reimbursement figures are intended to represent 70% of the total costs. Analysts with the Joint Fiscal Office now peg the total cost to the state at about $2.9 million.
At the urging of both public and private school groups, dissenters in the House Education Committee withheld their support for the measure out of concern that it left schools and child care centers on hook for an ultimately unknowable amount.
“It comes with a price, which no one can decipher. We don’t know what the price is going to be, and taking that home to your district is another story,” committee vice chair Rep. Larry Cupoli, R-Rutland City, told his peers on Tuesday.
The committee was originally slated to vote on the measure on Tuesday, but it was postponed after House Education Chair Kate Webb, D-Shelburne, promised to talk to leadership once more in an attempt to find support for full state reimbursement. But she warned her committee members at the time that was unlikely to happen, and returned on Wednesday morning with the same proposal.
“We all wanted a 100 percent, but we have to live within certain realities. We don’t have the money identified,” Webb said in an interview after the vote.
Environmental advocates, meanwhile, will be lobbying lawmakers to bring the action level back down. Elena Mihaly, a staff attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, said the group would like to see lawmakers set the action level at 1 parts per billion, which is what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends.
“There is no safe level of lead,” she said.
CLF is, however, on board – if reluctantly – with the extended deadline, given the Legislature’s lengthier-than-expected process.
“In order to compensate for that lost time, and make sure that the testing still happens, we support the agency’s 18-month timeline,” she said.
The bill still has a long way to go. It will have to go through another two House committees – Human Services and Appropriations – before heading to the floor. A committee of conference will likely be called to hash out differences between the House and Senate versions.
