SEBRING, Ohio (AP) — Schools shut down for three days over lead-tainted water in rural northeastern Ohio are slated to reopen.
Classes in the Sebring school district near Youngstown were expected to resume Wednesday after being closed three days in a row.
Residents in the village and two other communities were told late last week that high levels of lead had been found last summer in the drinking water.
Ohio’s environmental regulators say residents should have been told by no later than November about the elevated lead levels.
Recent tests at the schools found that two drinking fountains at separate schools had lead levels that exceeded Environmental Protection Agency standards.
School officials say they have shut off those drinking fountains and that students are allowed to bring their own water and hand sanitizer to classes.
State records show that the water plant manager violated numerous state rules regarding plant operations in past years.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that in 2009 environmental regulators told Sebring water system manager James Bates that he had been operating in a manner that endangered public health.
The records unrelated to the recent lead testing say he also attempted to ignore poor water readings and submitted misleading, inaccurate or false reports.
Ohio’s environmental agency now is calling for a criminal investigation of Bates after saying he falsified reports about high levels of lead and copper being detected last summer in some homes in Sebring near Youngstown.
Bates on Tuesday called the allegations “an outright lie.”