Lead-free Water for EC Students

We are a small school in East Chicago, Indiana and our children are being poisoned. There is no way to short-change that or explain it away. Our children are drinking water known to contain lead.

Imagine the emotional turmoil our families experience while not being able to provide their children with safe drinking water. Imagine being a teacher, knowing that your students are being exposed to lead every night when they leave your school. If you know the effects lead poisoning can cause, you know that lead exposure is a lifelong, irreversible trauma that affects the brain in complex and subtle ways. The going wisdom is that any exposure to lead is an unsafe exposure—but the homes in which our students live are receiving toxic levels of lead.

We are a small public, charter school in East Chicago, Indiana—the current site of a lead crisis comparable to Flint, Michigan’s. All families in the city are affected, but we are seeking funds to at least provide our students and their families with filtration in their homes, until such a time that the city and state are able to meet their responsibility to provide clean and safe drinking water.

A few years back our school participated in a Mudlove fundraiser to help a town in Africa receive access to clean, safe drinking water. In an outpouring of support, students from a highest poverty school raised whatever they could to make life better for others.
Now, our children are the victims of unsafe water. According to the EPA, 90% of homes in East Chicago have lead water lines. The EPA recommends that every home in the city filter their water and the state has designated one neighborhood (built on the abandoned site of a lead foundry) as an area of special concern. The govenor has now declared that area a distaster zone.

Our goal is to provide each of our families with one faucet mounted filter and two replacement cartridges per child. This is not a permanent solution—the lines will have to be replaced, home filtration units will have to be installed, or some other intervention will be needed. This is an immediate intervention to assist our families in the short term. Please give so that we can protect them until permanent solutions are adopted.

Any and all funds recieved will be spent on water filtration, plan and simple. Once we have provided for our families, we will provide for additional households until such time as the need is meet. 

Our children are being poisoned.

--The Teachers, Staff, and Families of East Chiocago Lighthouse Charter School

(Post-script: Northwest Indiana Times Continuing Coverage of Lead Crisis in East Chicago