Lead in the Water: Gregori High School's Summer Scramble Before Fall Classes

Six weeks before students walk through the doors at Gregori High School, officials are racing against the clock to solve a water crisis that caught the district off guard.

Routine lead and copper testing in early June revealed something nobody wanted to see: eight out of ten sink faucets tested exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s action level for lead. The highest concentrations showed up in bathroom sinks. Drinking fountains tested clean, but the district yanked them out of service anyway as a precaution. The moment the lab results came back June 22, bottled water was distributed and public notification went out. No chances were being taken.

Rachel Riess with the Stanislaus County Department of Environmental Resources was blunt about the stakes:“Lead is never safe to consume at any level.”The good news, though—the contamination appears to be coming from the school’s plumbing fixtures themselves, not from the groundwater or the broader water system serving the neighborhood. That’s contained. The bad news: officials still don’t know exactly what’s causing it or how to fix it, which is why they’re working with California’s Drinking Water Division and corrosion control specialists to dig deeper.

Here’s the kicker: Gregori High School dealt with this exact problem back in 2018. After similar precautions kicked in, follow-up testing a month later showed levels had dropped below the federal action level. Then nothing—years of routine monitoring came back clean. Until now. Which raises an uncomfortable question: Was the 2018 fix incomplete, or did something new degrade in the school’s water system?

The district is committed to resolving this before students return this fall. Bottled water will stay available while testing continues. It’s the right move, and it buys time. But the fact that this keeps happening at the same school suggests there’s something systemic that hasn’t been fully addressed. Parents and students deserve to know what’s being done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.