On January 23rd, my group and I had an interview with Phil Kassen. Phil Kassen is LREI’s school director and helped us understand the school’s water filtration system. He started off by saying how most of New York City’s water is relatively clean, however some of the pipe that the water is run through are old. So most of the lead that people find in NYC water comes from those pipes. The water that comes into the school and comes out of the faucets isn’t filtered, but the water that comes out of the water fountains is filtered. Because of what was going on in Flint, Michigan, the school decided to check the water and test it if it had any contamination. They tested all the water and water fountains at the school over the summer, and found that in every water outlet the amount of lead was minimal. However they wanted to go further and in the classrooms where they found any lead in the water (this is both buildings) they installed water filters on them. As one of our question we asked: Does the school reuse water? The answer: No, because we wouldn’t be able to use it for cooking or water fountains. It was really interesting having an interview with Phil Kassen. It was helpful to our group that we talked directly to the school’s director to know how the water filtration system works at our school.
