President Joe Biden speaks about his commitment to removing lead pipes and ensuring clean drinking water across the country at an event at the Wilmington Convention Center in Wilmington, North Carolina, on May 2. (Madeline Gray/The Washington Post)

The White House on Thursday announced $26 million in additional funding to test and remove lead from water in schools and child care centers, two months ahead of the planned release of a new regulation requiring such testing in elementary and middle schools.

Although there is no national requirement to test drinking water in schools for lead, it is commonly found in states and municipalities that have chosen to test. Lead in schools often comes not from lead service lines, the narrow pipes that supply homes and small businesses, but from lead-containing pipes and fixtures.

“We are making sure that children have a safe and healthy environment to learn and grow up and that everyone in this country can turn on the faucet and drink clean water,” said Natalie Quillian, deputy White House chief of staff.

According to health organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, there is no safe level of lead exposure. Drinking water contaminated with lead during childhood can lead to developmental delays, behavioral problems, and attention deficit disorder.

The new money is one of several grants designed to address the ongoing problem of lead contamination in drinking water across the country. All 50 states and territories in the United States will be able to apply for the funds next year.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced $58 million in grants for lead testing for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.

The Biden administration is also allocating $3 billion annually to replace lead pipes, which primarily affect homes rather than schools, as part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill – a small down payment on the more than $45 billion that the EPA says would be needed to eliminate the country’s nine million lead pipes.

While environmental and health activists say Thursday’s announcement is a positive step, it is not enough to solve the problem for the country’s schoolchildren.

“There is absolutely not enough money to ensure with certainty that the tap water our children drink when we send them to school is not contaminated,” says Mona Hanna, a pediatrician and associate dean of public health at Michigan State University, who helped uncover the widespread lead problem in Flint, Michigan’s water 10 years ago.

Hanna helped draft Michigan’s “Filter First” law, which requires every school and daycare to equip drinking fountains with lead filters. The program, passed in October, will cost Michigan an estimated $78 million, depending on how many filters are already installed, she said.

This initiative is part of a movement to replace funding for water testing in schools with money to install drinking fountains with filters. Some supporters argue that this is more cost-effective and will stop children from drinking lead-containing water at school more quickly than regular testing.

Sarah Malik is a Houston mother whose school district tested faucets last year and found that nearly a third of schools had lead levels above 15 parts per billion, the level at which the EPA must trigger lead treatment protocols.

Her daughter was in second grade at the time and attended a school where lead was found in several faucets.

“We sent her to school with several bottles of water. She told her friends, ‘Don’t drink the water, it’s poisonous,'” Malik said.

Malik sent her daughter to a private school this year. She said she wants the federal government to require schools to remove lead from water as soon as it is discovered, and within a short period of time.

“Any funding for this is good, but pure testing without a plan for the future is useless,” Malik said.

In October, the EPA plans to release a proposal that would require energy suppliers to conduct lead testing in all middle and elementary schools – where younger children who are more vulnerable to lead learn – and to offer testing in high schools within the next five years.

“This is without question something that this country has underinvested in nationally for decades,” Quillian said. “So it’s going to take some time, but I think everything we’ve been pushing for … to provide additional funding for lead pipes is the only way we’re going to have clean drinking water for everyone from here.”