Faced with an additional 10 years of filtering an elementary school's water supply, parents are renewing efforts to hook the building into the public system.
It could be a decade or longer before the wells at Forest Hill Elementary are free of contamination and providing safe drinking water, officials at Maryland Department of the Environment said last week in meetings with parents and with the Harford County Council.
The wells at the school, which opened in 2000 and has an enrollment of about 600, must be filtered to prevent contamination from a gasoline additive that has been detected in the ground.
"The good news is that there has not been one breach of the filter," said Councilman James V. McMahan.
But that is hardly a permanent solution, said parents, who want to cap off the wells and connect the building to a nearby public water line.
Trace amounts of MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) were found in the two private wells at the school in 2005. Testing has shown continued MTBE contamination of the well water.
Current levels of the additive, which has been nearly eliminated from gasoline supplies throughout the state, are between 200 to 300 parts per billion around the wells, above the amount considered safe by federal standards.
The MDE has established two possible sources of contamination, but has yet to make a determination of how the chemical seeped into the ground. It may have been the vent line failure in one of the school's heating oil tanks or MTBE could have leaked from underground storage tanks at a gas station that once operated on Rocks Road, near the school. Those tanks have since been removed from the ground and the business no longer pumps gas.
"We hope to see MTBE levels at the school go down, but it will be an estimated 10 years that we will have to keep filters in place," said Herbert M. Meade, administrator of MDE's oil control program.
The $17,000 filtration system is sampled and tested monthly to ensure the potability of the water. Yet most parents send children to school with bottled water.
"I commend the Board of Education for temporarily addressing this situation," said Patrick Fadden, father of a second-grade student at the school. "But a permanent solution is necessary. Mechanical systems are subject to failure."
A safer and ultimately less costly solution lies a few hundred yards away with connection to a public water line that runs along Jarrettsville Road, parents said. Officials have been reluctant to extend those lines outside the county's dedicated growth area out of concerns for spurring growth.
"The solution is within sight," Fadden said. "There is a public water line on Jarrettsville Road. Just because the school is outside the development envelope, we should not gamble with our children's health. Imaginary lines should not have an impact on public safety."
More than 100 parents met with the MDE on Monday at the school. Meade made a similar presentation to the council Tuesday.
"We have no definite answers on how long the filters will last," said Houston Mason, a father of four whose children will be in the school for the next 11 years. "There was a plan to connect this school to public water when it was built. The county should make an exemption in this case. We are talking about the safety of our kids."
Even though the water is safe, most parents prefer bottled water for their children and sanitizers for hand washing, Fadden said.
The cost of connecting the school to a public line might ultimately be reimbursed by the party responsible for the MTBE leak, officials said. But initially the county would most likely bear the expense.
Council President Billy Boniface reminded the parents that the seven-member panel has no authority to fund a water line. That process must begin with a capital improvements request from the county executive.
"I know the council can't do anything at this point," Fadden said. "But I wanted them to hear from parents."
The school is one of five sites in the county where the MDE is working to clean up leaks of hazardous materials. The agency has notified neighbors living near several other sites where there is a potential for leakage and has designated parts of the county as "a high-risk ground water use area," because of the prevalence of wells and the proximity to storage tanks.
Much of the problem stems from aging underground tanks, Meade said. New industry-wide standards for installation deter corrosion of tanks and pipes, and stringent monitoring has helped curtail leaks. A few years ago, Harford had 521 facilities with underground tanks. Today, 124 remain and 19 of those are located in the high-risk area, he said.
"There is always the chance of an accident," Meade said. "But stations operated to today's standards should never see a liquid release. I have not seen the bad impacts to ground water that we saw with MTBE."
mary.gail.hare@baltsun.com