Marty Schladen

El Paso Times

AUSTIN — Residents and workers at State Supported Living Centers in El Paso, San Angelo and Brenham, Texas, are using bottled water after tests detected unacceptable levels of lead in their water.

Also, plumbing and fixtures that might be responsible for the contamination are being replaced, said a spokeswoman for the Department of Aging and Disability Services, which administers the homes for the disabled.

However, the agency hasn’t decided whether to test disabled residents and their caretakers to see whether they have high levels of lead in their bodies. An advocate is asking why.

“I’m kind of stunned,” Dennis Borel, executive director of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, said Wednesday. “It seems to be like it should be a slam dunk.”

The elevated lead levels were detected after the department began testing in January.

Test results the department sent to the El Paso Times this week show that in one case, lead was measured at 104 parts per billion at the El Paso center, or almost seven times the limit recommended by the federal government. At the San Angelo center, one test detected lead at 118 parts per billion, or almost eight times the recommended limit.

A sample taken at the Brenham Center had 266 parts per billion, or 18 times the recommended limit, the Dallas Morning News reported. Brenham is west of Houston.

Elevated lead can cause developmental problems in the central nervous systems of children. In adults, lead has been linked to heart and kidney disease and reduced fertility.

Despite the high readings for lead in water coming out of faucets, the Department of Aging and Disability Services has not yet decided whether to test people in the facilities.

“We are working closely with the Department of State Health Services to determine whether it is necessary to test residents and/or staff at the three centers where elevated levels were found,” spokeswoman Cecilia Cavuto said in an email. “If so, we will conduct testing at that time. There have been no instances of residents or staff experiencing any signs or symptoms of exposure to elevated levels of lead or copper.”

Borel said there shouldn’t be much to decide.

“It’s not unusual for these individuals to be there for 10, 15 or 25 years,” he said of the facilities’ residents. “I see no downside to testing them.”

The El Paso State Supported Living Center on Delta Drive opened in 1974 and is home to more than 100 people with various disabilities.

Public awareness of the hazards posed by elevated lead levels has been raised since Flint, Mich., began drawing water from an alternative source in 2014 as a cost-saving measure ordered by the state government. Residents and officials there still are dealing with the fallout from the crisis.

Cavuto said that after the first round of results, her agency decided to test more comprehensively than it originally planned.

“In 2015 we proactively developed and implemented a policy in which the water at all of our facilities would be tested quarterly for lead and copper,” she said. “The first round of testing began in January 2016. As a result of this initial round of tests, we are now conducting campus-wide tests at all of the centers, rather than on the previous quarterly schedule.”

Marty Schladen can be reached at 512-479-6606; mschladen@elpasotimes.com; @martyschladen on Twitter.