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Lead in Ohio Villages’ Water Went Uncurbed for Months, State Says

Cases of water ready for distribution at the Sebring Community Center in Sebring, Ohio, on Tuesday.Credit...Mark Gillispie/Associated Press

Lead contamination in tap water went unchecked for months in a cluster of Ohio villages, state officials said Tuesday, as a local official waited too long to raise an alarm, caused more delays with shoddy paperwork, failed to do required testing and might have even falsified documents on water quality.

Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that even after some corrective action had been taken, tests showed that water from many faucets and drinking fountains in public schools in Sebring still showed measurable levels of lead. Most levels, however, were below the allowable limit set by the federal government. The agency had reported similar results in Sebring homes.

The news came amid the crisis in Flint, Mich., where for months, local and state officials brushed off indications of lead contamination. As in Flint, the problem with the Sebring municipal system, which serves 8,100 customers there and in the neighboring communities of Beloit and Maple Ridge, appears to be that it draws from a river with water that is unusually corrosive, causing lead to leach out of old pipes.

Craig W. Butler, the director of the state environmental agency, said that when Sebring’s water was tested in 2012, lead levels were within allowable limits, and that the source — the Mahoning River — had not changed since then. “Exactly what drove a change in their water quality, it is undetermined at this point,” he said.

On Tuesday, the agency announced that it had barred James V. Bates, the operator of the water treatment plant, from operating any water treatment system in Ohio and had taken steps to revoke his license. The agency revealed that it also had reason to believe that he falsified reports, and that it had opened an investigation.

“It is not often where we have, frankly, significant suspicions of wrongdoing,” said Mr. Butler, who has been with the agency for 25 years.

Mr. Bates has denied that allegation to local news media. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Calls to the village manager were not returned.

The state agency has asked the federal authorities to start a criminal investigation. The federal Environmental Protection Agency said that no decision had been made on the request.

Medical experts and federal guidelines say there is no known safe level of lead, which is toxic to the nervous system and other parts of the body. Federal rules set a maximum allowable level of 15 micrograms of lead per liter of tap water. They require corrective action by a water system if, when it tests various locations, 10 percent or more of the samples exceed that level.

The Sebring water system found measurable levels of lead in most of the samples it took in August and September, with the highest 10 percent above 21 micrograms, and the highest at 34. But the village did not notify many residents until last week.

Letters from the agency to Mr. Bates and others showed the state repeatedly accusing the water agency of violating state requirements, including failure to notify the state promptly of its lead test results, failure to include water samples in its reports, failure to warn consumers within 30 days, submitting incomplete or inaccurate paperwork, failure to perform some water tests often enough and failure to replace or repair broken monitoring equipment.

“It has become apparent that our field office was too patient in dealing with the village of Sebring’s cat-and-mouse game and should have had closer scrutiny on the water system meeting its deadlines,” Mr. Butler said. “We are in the process of developing new protocols and appropriate personnel actions to ensure that our field staff takes action when it appears that a water system is not complying and taking their review seriously.”

The test results the state reported Tuesday were for water from taps and fountains at three public schools. One school had no lead detected. At the other two, 22 of 47 samples had detectable lead. Two drinking fountains were above the federal threshold, and school officials said those had been disconnected.

Sebring schools, which were closed Friday, Monday and Tuesday over lead fears, will reopen Wednesday.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Water Utility Brushed Off Lead Levels, Ohio Says. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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