GRAND HAVEN, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – The concerns of PFAs in drinking water have come to the Lakeshore.
Yesterday, the Ottawa County Department of Public Health announced that students, teachers and staff at Robinson Elementary School in the Grand Haven Public School district will immediately be drinking supplied bottled water after elevated levels of PFAS were spotted in water coming out of the school’s drinking fountains. The tests were part of a statewide proactive study conducted in the wake of a similar high level result in Parchment earlier this year.
Officials at Robinson Elementary took immediate action to shut off those drinking fountains once tests showed those levels at 144 ppt, more than double the federal EPA maximum safe level. The high levels don’t affect water uses for washing hands and other skin contact.
The school gets its water from nearby wells and not from the Northwest Ottawa Water System, which supplies drinking water to all other schools in the district. PFAS levels in that water system were “well below” health advisory levels, according to a statement by the county health department.
Further tests are being taken before the state Department of Environmental Quality determines the next course of action for the school, as well as for homes and businesses using groundwater in that vicinity.