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This week's firestorm over lead in Portland Public Schools' water is likely to have all kinds of fallout.
One of the first consequences is complications for today's end-of-year carnival at King School, threatening such popular activities as the pie-in-the-face event and the dunk tank.
On Tuesday, WW reported that in 2010-2012, at least 47 buildings in the Portland Public Schools system had at least one source of drinking water with water testing above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "action level" for lead of 15 parts per billion.
One of those buildings was King School, a pre-kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in Northeast Portland whose students have had a turbulent year already.
In late February, The Oregonian reported that a man was shot to death on the same block as King. Just this week, according to Jaime Cale, this year's carnival chair and King's PTA president-elect, the school was on lockout due to a shooting in the neighborhood.
"Almost every other month our kids are having to deal with a shooting or gunshots or worse—death in the neighborhood," Cale says. "And they deserve to have a good carnival. So, despite the water, they are going to have a good carnival."
Coming into this week, the King School carnival was set to be a blowout—a bouncy house, an inflatable slide, and a face-painting station had all been arranged, as well as a visit from sports team mascots Timber Joey and Blaze the Trail Cat.
But with Portland Public Schools' announcement that it was turning off drinking water at all schools, Cale says, came the realization that the scheduled pie-in-the-face event couldn't take place without potable water to wash the pie off of people's faces.
Even worse was the fact that the dunk tank, a student favorite and the biggest moneymaker at the carnival last year, could no longer have students dunked in it.
Cale contacted Portland Fire & Rescue to see if the bureau could fill the dunk tank from a hydrant but learned that hydrant water might not be any safer.
So, with no alternative to filling the tank with school water, only willing staff members—but no students—will be permitted into the dunk tank today.
"We've all looked at the CDC warnings and our numbers, and since the water's safe to shower in, we're hoping that the teachers will still get in the dunk tank once we fill it," Cale says. "I mean, there's a huge chance that there's going to be an empty dunk tank sitting there."
Willamette Week