Water quality worries aired to Coast Unified school board

Cambria’s services district isn’t alone in dealing with the issue of water. The topic surfaced at the most recent Coast Unified School District board meeting in Cambria, as well.

A packed house turned out for the meeting Thursday, Feb. 11, many of them students and many in support of Xue DiMaggio’s proposal to install two water-bottle refilling stations on the Coast Union High School campus.

But the water issue extended beyond DiMaggio’s idea, to encompass complaints about foul odors on campus, specifically in the shower area and one of the bathrooms.

DiMaggio, president of the art and environmental club and the kindness club, said her proposal was inspired in part by water-bottle refilling stations on campus at Cal Poly. She added that similar stations are in place in Arroyo Grande and that six are being installed in Paso Robles.

The stations, she said, would reduce the number of water bottles going into landfills and would save students money.

“The students are faced with drinking bad-tasting fountain water or paying 50 cents for bottled water,” she said.

Chemistry questions

The taste and smell of the water on campus were both mentioned repeatedly during the meeting.

During public comment period, Jennifer Lawson introduced herself as the parent of a freshman, whom she quoted as saying, “The water tastes like death.”

James Welch, a student who joined DiMaggio in making the proposal, stated that student testing of water from the art room sink and a campus water fountain both produced measures exceeding the EPA’s maximum level of 500 milligrams per liter for total dissolved solids (TDS).

“A chemistry test would really help to rule out the chance that our water has high levels of dangerous metals,” said DiMaggio, who submitted a petition from students supporting her proposal.

Superintendent Victoria Schumacher said the district has hired a water-treatment operator to do water testing at all the school sites, as well as the district office.

The results of those tests should be available in a week or two, board President Del Clegg and Lee Wight, the district’s maintenance and operations director, said after the meeting.

Schumacher said during the meeting that the district wanted to wait on the results of those tests before considering DiMaggio’s proposal.

That proposal, DiMaggio said, would be funded in part by a $3,000 grant from the Cambria Lions Club. This would cover a quote of $2,518 she received from Ferguson Enterprises for the cost of the two stations. She said a local general contractor had volunteered to help with the installation, but that additional costs would include the periodic need for replacement filters at $123 apiece.

Odors

After DiMaggio made her presentation, several students spoke during the board’s public comment period about foul odors on campus — including complaints about odor in the showers that Wight said likely originated before the district replaced the heaters in that facility.

“The water quality in the showers is ridiculous,” said senior Octavio Villalvazo. “I had a friend who showered in those showers, and he came back smelling like sulfur.”

Reagan Kniffen, a junior, said, “There are some bathrooms at our school that, if you walk through, it smells like human feces,” adding, “I can barely go in the bathroom without gagging.”

Wight said after the meeting that he thought the bathroom Kniffen was referring to was “right next to the septic system.”

Clegg pointed out that the water itself isn’t pumped from the district’s well, but comes from the Cambria Community Services District, which supplies the community as a whole.

Wight said the showers were built “for continuous use,” and a smell can arise when the showers aren’t in use for a certain period.

“If the drains go dry,” Clegg said after the meeting, “you get the septic smell back.”

This led board member Susie Nash to remark, “The smell prevents the kids from showering, and if the kids don’t shower, it causes the smell.”

Heaters replaced

Wight said the district had sought to mitigate the sulfur smell in the showers by replacing the heaters in the shower.

He wrote in an email response to The Cambrian that he, Coast Union Principal Jonathan Sison and maintenance lead David Bidwell inspected the showers the day after the board meeting and found “there was no odor.”

“We think that the odor mentioned in the meeting occurred prior to when we replaced the water heaters with new tankless water heaters at Coast Union and Santa Lucia about a year and a half ago.

“We also inspected the bathroom smell complaint and it had a slight odor. This odor could be a dry trap which our custodians will fill with water or sometimes the septic system burps and it releases this odor.

“We’ve been discussing infrastructure upgrades to include placing Coast Union on the sewer system in the future.”

This story was originally published February 17, 2016 at 11:11 AM with the headline "Water quality worries aired to Coast Unified school board."