Updates to the lead issues at M.P.S and in our homes (Hour 1)

Good

morning and welcome to The Earl Ingram Show.

As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.

That's 855-752-4842.

You can text us at that same number.

Good morning to you, Cardi.

How you doing, man?

Man, I'm doing good.

Earl, man.

How you feeling today?

Oh, man, I'm great, man.

How could we be not feeling anything but great after almost back-to-back 50-degree temperatures?

Whatever.

Whatever ills us.

Amen.

you know, 50 degree temperatures can at least hold it in the bands for a little while.

I agree with you on that.

Makes you want to bring out the skinny jeans, right?

Listen, man, listen, listen, that's an obscene thought.

Me and skinny jeans.

I haven't been able, if there was such a thing as skinny jeans, I wore them at 18 or 19, not at 70.

I think there's a law against that.

But anyway, it's Wednesday and I'm excited, man, because, you know, the band is back together as we address leaded water.

And so the campaign against lead in the water is back together.

Welcome back to my good friend.

I don't know what we got the doors in the background, man.

Is that on our end?

I'm hearing it.

OK, you probably got it.

Uh, get the lead out with none other than Mr. Robert Miranda and, uh, Paul Swartz, uh, co-founder of campaign for lead free water.

And we brought back, or they brought back Dr. Christian Payne, uh, who is, uh, you know, kind of working with the issues, uh, in the, the lead, uh, in MPS and those schools and represent parents.

on that front.

Good morning to all of you.

How are you doing?

Good morning, girl.

Thanks for having me back.

All right.

Let's save schools MKE Robert.

So so what's going on, man?

You know, I mean, I know I was talking to you guys a minute before we went on the air about fears that many of us have.

I was telling you.

And you guys several weeks ago that I was watching in my neighborhood all throughout the winter they were removing those those pipes and It was just unbelievable watching you know how much work they had accomplished in my neighborhood in in you know going back to I don't know I guess I'd noticed it

in June or July, and they had really started making some progress.

Are you concerned that later progress may change?

Right now, what we're concerned about is that the progress stays focused and continues.

Will it change?

Right now at this point in time, there is a lot of talk about those changes, but nothing has seriously gone into implementation.

The idea here is that we need to continue to.

Cokes are elected officials to continue moving forward, removing these slurred service lines as quickly as possible, to move as money as possible, to get to the point where we can at least put a major dent in the number of these led service lines there in Milwaukee.

We had over 70,000 when we first started pushing this issue back then.

2015, where I believe near about 60 to at least getting into the 50s.

But right now, we just got to keep focused on pushing this and continue to lead the advocacy because if it does impact us, our voices are going to be needed and we're going to have to be louder than

than usual.

We've got to, we've got to get rid of this toxin from our environment.

Paul, I guess you, you're just in Capitol Hill,

huh?

Yeah, I actually was, you know, G.C.

has a local government, so I was in front of our local government, testifying not, not federal government.

And our president, Donald Trump, is wanting to take away our local government.

He's announced that he wants to push back on

home rule, which is the law that passed in 73.

That's a mayor and a city council and they want to abolish that.

So I guess he wants to be focused on our potholes and picking up trash in Washington DC.

But yeah, no, we still have a functioning local government and a lot at stake, just like in Milwaukee and other communities around the country on this issue.

Dr. Payne, things are ramping up.

in Milwaukee public schools with the lead issues, where are we at with that?

So we have the lead risk assessments for two schools already out and released to the public.

We're expecting two additional schools reports to be released this week, as well as final clearance on Goldenmeyer lower campus.

So we're actually expecting quite a bit of data out.

this week.

Additionally, the Milwaukee Health Department has said they'll be setting up free lead screening clinics in the schools and we're supposed to get information about that this week or next week.

So let me ask you guys because I remember reading something that said that the health and human services can't

force MPS to check for lead in all of their buildings.

It can't be something that they do.

You would think that this would be something that they would do across all of the buildings.

Why can't they do that?

My understanding and listening to the Common Council hearing last week is that there's some state law that specifies that it's childcare facilities.

So any MPS schools that have kindergarten classrooms would be impacted here.

And they would fall under state enforcement and monitoring, but other schools that don't have the kindergarten classrooms would fall outside of that.

that statue.

You know, Robert, I'm going to let you take it over from nettles or things that I just wanted to ask, but I still don't understand.

I will never understand why lead is just an issue when it comes to children in kindergarten classes.

And, you know, it's not a threat.

And later water is throughout the entire district.

So you can't use that reference, but that's what they're using.

They just don't understand how ubiquitous lead is in water for some reason.

There is this prevailing notion that has been going on for decades and decades that lead in water isn't that serious.

It's seen as a kind of secondary kind of non-issue.

You know, when we first started, no one addressed issue of lead in water until we started bringing it up bad over 10 years ago.

Now people are slowly catching on.

I think the more people hear about this issue, the more they become curious, the more they want to look into it and the more they'll realize how neglected of an issue this has been.

And so as more people get educated on this matter.

Hopefully we'll see more advocacy, we'll see more voices, we'll see parents like Kristen raising questions and demanding answers because if we allow this to fall back to pre-2015 years and we're going to go back to where we were and we can't allow this matter especially lead in water to be seen.

as a non-issue like it was prior to our efforts back in 2015.

You know, guys, we just got a text message from a guy named Mark.

And his text message says, how do the Wizards of Smart explain the fact that millions of people like myself live in homes with lead laterals with no ill health effects and no criminal history?

I have physicals yearly.

Well, I think you

may not know that you do have some effects for asking a moronic question like that.

Anybody want to take a bite at that, man?

Yeah, I'd like to do that.

You know, thank you, Mark, for calling us the Wizards of Smart.

That's a great campaign.

You

need

a teacher.

One of the things about lead

and not just lead in water, but any exposure to lead is that a lot of the effects of lead are short of being visibly physically sick or dying.

So you can lose IQ points.

You might have been a genius and now you're just normal and you're not functioning as well, or your maturity isn't as good because the frontal lobe doesn't develop, or you have a tension deficit disorder or like me, hyperactivity disorder.

there's all sorts of ways that lead effects people that aren't visible and that other things also contribute to.

So for older people, hearing loss and heart issues, there's lots of ways that lead effects almost every organ in the body and all of the systems.

And that's just in the scientific literature and it might not be caught in the physical, but I can just guarantee you that we have these effects in our community.

More anger, aggression,

doesn't always translate into criminal behavior, but it can.

Or people can not graduate from school or not be able to hold down a job because they can't pull it together.

So it's a really important question that you asked.

It's not visible.

You can't smell it.

You can't taste blood.

Most docs aren't looking for the effects.

And the key thing, Mark, is not to worry about whether it's affecting you, but whether it's affecting the community.

and to prevent the exposure.

And that's something that we can do.

And one of the things I just want to shout out to is that people can put in a filter that's what's called point of view filter at the tap and on the faucet.

And if you have NSF 42 and 53 certification, that's going to most likely end the exposure today.

So

while we're all working together to find out what's going on in the Milwaukee public schools and in our homes,

You know, it's important to protect

ourselves.

Well, you know, Robert, you know, Robert, I just do a fair mark just through a fastball straight down the middle for you.

So we're going to let you respond on the other side.

I know you can't wait.

I got a lot to talk about this morning again, campaign for lead free water.

The gang's all here, eight by five, seven, five, two, forty, eight, forty two.

It's Wednesday.

That means you're tuned into the Erlingham show.

you

Welcome back to the early room show as always You can join us at eight five five seven five two forty eight forty two to say five five seven five two forty eight forty two Texas at that same number I'm drawing once again by the coalition for get the lead out mr. Paul Swartz co-founder of campaign for lead free water Robert Miranda of get the lead out and dr. Christian Payne has returned with lead safe schools MK

Robert, you want to respond and we're not going to spend any more time on that foolish question, but your thoughts.

I think Paul hit it right on target.

Harry Potter just is out there.

We'll just leave it at that.

Uh, because, you know, I think we, we could talk about more pertinent issues.

Yeah.

So, so, so Robert, what's, what's going on there?

What's on the horizon?

Well, um, actually, let me go ahead and pass it on to Dr. Payne, because, uh, uh, as she, uh, had indicated, there are a number of things going on and she's, uh,

right now in the middle of organizing with parents to put a community assembly together.

So Dr. Payne, why don't you give us an update on all that?

Sure.

So right now we're flyering at MPS schools trying to get information to other parents about the issues that are going on.

We know that families are very busy and aren't able to necessarily attend nor watch all of the information that's only coming out usually through press conference during the day while most people are working.

And so we're attempting to try to get that information out to folks.

And thus we're holding a community assembly this Saturday at Washington Park Library in Milwaukee from 1.30 to 3.30.

And we're inviting the community to attend so that we can

disseminate this information, answer questions, and we've got a few action items for people to engage in before we conclude.

So this will be our first opportunity to come together as a larger group to build these connections, to build some of our power, and to try to get some of our demands met.

And that's it.

And that's a very powerful thing because I don't know, Paulie, maybe you could correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we have anything like this going on around the United States where parents are mobilizing and organizing like this.

Am I wrong?

Do you know of any other effort going on around the country?

Well, I think the things that Dr. Payne are talking about, getting people together to build relationships, to share information, to mobilize are really important.

I just want to make a shout out in my community in Washington DC, parents, PTOs, PTAs, others got together and they were the driving force behind the first school's filter first law in the nation.

And so, you know, working with community partners, we made a real difference there.

I think it's critical.

There's not enough.

people who are doing that work in their communities and the idea of spreading it from the schools that sort of figured it out first in Milwaukee to other schools in the district and then to think about across Wisconsin and the country is really critical because there's strength in numbers and because we have a lot of information that's more on point than the officials who are from the top down.

I've been doing

you know, sort of the wrong things.

But I also think we should say that we should have some grace for Milwaukee Public Schools and the Milwaukee Health Department and expect of them to do their job.

And, you know, because it's not a substitute, those agencies really need to get their act together.

You know, as I think about this, you know, we've got more than one school district in Milwaukee now.

And so children are in all of those areas.

And so as we focus on Milwaukee public schools, this probably should be a broader focus.

And the different vouchers and choice schools, they've got half of the Milwaukee public school students in them.

And so Dr. Christian Payne, I'm not saying we've got to start somewhere, but it's probably something that's even broader.

you know if while we're talking about this and I just want to say that certainly civic media and in our radio station wants to play a role in that so we will certainly uh as we move forward with these kinds of things where we put these things together I want to make sure that I'm there with civic media supporting this effort.

Well, Earl, you're welcome to come to the assembly that we're going to have this Saturday, but you're right about the need to disseminate the information as well as to

kind of teach people effective forms of advocacy.

We're looking for the outcomes, right?

So

one of our goals at Lead Safe Schools is actually to create a national model or toolkit that can be spread to other locales.

And of course, we would encourage parents and community members to adapt the information to their specific circumstances, but we'll be working on creating those toolkits so that we can get wider reach.

855-752-4842 campaign for lead free water is on the line.

Your thoughts as always 855-752-4842 talk or text will continue the conversation on the early room show.

All right, welcome back to The Early Ingram Show.

As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.

You can text us at that same number.

I'm joined once again by Get the Lead Outs on Paul Swartz, Robert Miranda, and Dr. Christian Payne.

You know, Robert, it's this battle, you know, that...

Clearly is is fault in in different areas and it kind of city by city state by state's kind of black by black, right?

I mean, that's where it's got to be one.

I mean, is it is it going to be one in a national debate or a national argument?

Or is this something that needs to be kind of done, you know, house by house?

It's going to take every which way possible.

I mean.

Whatever means is necessary, as Malcolm X once said, is what has got to be done.

We need to move this issue forward because it impacts future generations of this country, the health of our city, the health of our states, the health of the country.

If the Romans figured it out 2,000 years ago, the United States can surely figure it out today.

And so we need to advocate this and be strong about advocating it and understanding this issue.

And in understanding, we need to force policymakers to make some changes.

And one of those changes that we should be looking at is as Dr. Payne mentioned, we're waiting for the results of two other schools to come in and regarding the assessments done on them.

We need to look at

this approach of testing the water and the current approach of testing and chasing where this is coming from should be looked at as well we need to.

really prioritize the use of filters.

I think Paul has a little bit more on that issue.

I want to bring him into this in regards to how we're currently addressing this kind of agenda that we're experiencing today.

And so before we go to Paul, you know, and Paul, maybe you can answer this one as well.

Do you get frustrated, you know, because again, when you see something like what's happening in Milwaukee and the focus is again on lead paint.

And, and lead water is not even being discussed for the most part.

It's almost like it's an afterthought.

Um, and, you know, we've got our focus now on the dust and the lead paint.

Hey, I don't know what that is in the background, Cardi, but let's see if we can get rid of it.

But it's, it's, it's, I'm

pausing.

Okay.

Paul, is that

in there?

Okay.

But it seems to be something that I can't.

I can't, it just continues to boggle my mind that they can just say, well, dismiss the water issue.

Yeah, that's a great question.

And it's certainly something that communities are dealing with across the country where they're trying to get a comprehensive understanding of all of the sources of lead.

And that can contribute to the problems we have in.

the bodies of our children and in our community.

But the the key thing is two things.

One is that there's only a voluntary school testing program for water.

That program is flawed in many ways.

It's called the three T's and we need to abolish that because it has us waste lots of money on doing a lot of testing when we know that lead is ubiquitous out of the taps.

and not with a filter first program.

The second thing is that we need to have our health department and our schools have expertise in them that understands how lead and water works and that follows the peer reviewed science and the best practices.

And so while it's important and it may well be the source that lead, paint and dust is a problem for our kids in the schools in Milwaukee and other places.

there's a lack of understanding and a discounting almost automatically about lead and water.

And just to be clear that most schools don't have lead laterals or service lines coming into them.

It's because of the interior plumbing and the particles, the lead scale and the little chunks of lead that fall off erratically that most testing one or two times at a tap is not designed to catch.

And so it just needs to be more grace and work done by those agencies to reach out to us and to the expertise that exists out in the country and listen to the parents about the necessity to look at all of this.

You know, Robert, you and Paul have been at this a lot longer than Dr. Christian.

But.

So are you finding it harder for you to get elected officials on the state levels and local levels to buy into this?

I mean, if their voices would resound with this, could we move faster?

Could we get things done?

More so.

Well, I'm able to at least speak with them and they do listen.

They are interested.

I think that what impacts that is they take the word of the health departments and the water utilities and those are the two elements that need to

basically change the message that they spread.

With the water utilities, it's hard because the American Water Works Association is a major lobby group that has the ears of a lot of elected officials statewide and at the federal government.

And so with them, they're providing the kind of cover language that the water utilities and municipalities use.

It's easier for them to convince these elected officials not to take the kind of actions they need to take.

But here, I think.

with the common council and and with the health department.

I mean, when I attended the meeting last week, I had good conversations with them.

I had a couple of good conversations going on with the chair of the public health committee.

But again, they still adhere to what they call the majority opinion.

And that is the majority opinion is still about the fact that

that pain and dust is the primary cause, despite the fact that they don't have scientific data or research data that proves that argument.

But people like Dr. Payne do make an impact.

I think maybe she could speak to a little bit of a question she's asking the health department.

I saw this morning she sent me an email about that.

Could you talk to us a little bit about that, Dr. Payne?

Yeah, so we have the lead in water reports for two of these schools, but we don't have any information on the protocols or procedures that were used and whether those are in line with EPA.

suggestions and guidelines, which I think are the three T's that Paul was talking about.

So we asked some clarifying questions.

I think one of the frustrating things for me is that there's talk by the health department of doing a final clearance and getting that final clearance, for instance, for Goldemeyer lower campus, but that is only going to include information on the dust levels and the chipping paint in the schools.

So it is becoming

coming in afterthought, right?

So they have the data that there is lead in some of these water sources, but the final clearance is going to be coming only based on the lead paint and dust sources.

You know, guys, what's so telling about all of this is supposedly there was some plan that was already in place in Milwaukee public schools prior to this information coming out.

and clearly whatever that plan was, it was failing miserably.

And the fact that had somebody not discovered this child, it would have been business as usual.

Now it's everything full speed ahead.

So it's one thing to now go full speed ahead, but as soon as things slow down, how do you maintain

the plan you know Robert it goes back to when I remember when you were forcing the district I was you know spending time I was working in the schools and I saw the new water fountains that they brought in brand new they look real nice if you go through there and look at them now you know they don't look anywhere near as nice as they used to which means they haven't been maintaining

what it was that they were forced to do.

Can I just add that for a minute?

MPS recently released a website where they have information on the maintenance of those water filters and there's lots of missing information there and so that's one of the things we want.

clarified how they're making these determinations of when those filters are replaced and who is responsible for doing that.

Given that the maintenance was so poor in the schools to begin with, we can't just rely on their word that these things were done.

We need some sort of monitoring system, whether that's tags that are placed on the water fountains for when those filters were replaced and by whom.

or some other way that that information is available to the public?

Well, you know, I have to tell you guys, a little inside information, NPS is struggling to even find enough engineers, enough people to even keep the buildings clean, let alone monitor these things, Robert.

I mean, this is a monumental issue we're talking about.

Well, it is monumental and like some of the members of the Common Council's Public Safety and Health Committee said, you know, when we're talking about the safety and health of the children at the schools, what ideology or what philosophy are they following?

Not to make that a priority.

And this is an important.

issue for us as a community, as a city, as a state that the schools that our children go to being polluted with this toxin and no real effort is being made by the school system to eradicate this issue really goes to the

mindset of the leadership.

The bottom line is what are they thinking?

What is it that is their priority that the education of our children is being compromised by a toxin in the school that is harming them?

And so when we push them,

10 years ago to do what they did.

We organized the district.

We organized students.

North Division had a walkout.

South Division had.

many different movements and the students went ahead and pushed that matter and the district had to respond.

So hopefully the parents will have that same kind of impact and make the kind of policy changes and the kind of maintenance plans and that are needed so that we don't have to revisit this once again.

Dr. Pena, are you at all concerned that with all the other things that this district is up against and there are many?

that this is down the line of all the different things that the district is faced with.

How do you keep it, you know, on the front burner as the district is faced with all these other issues?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a real crisis of faith here in terms of the district itself.

But I think that that just means that we have to continue to be consistent and persistent in our messaging and to make sure that this doesn't fall away.

You know, Paul, we'll get you on the other side because I mean, you're in Washington DC.

You guys were at this early and you faced some of the same things.

We can talk about how.

how you guys are able to work through it.

855-752-4842.

Get to let out coalition on the Earl Ingram Show.

you

As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.

Text us at that same number.

You know, it's, you know, get the let out coalition.

And before we went to break, I was asking the question of Paul Schwartz, who's the co-founder of Campaign for Lead Free Water and focused out of Washington, DC.

Paul, how did you guys handle, I mean,

I'm pretty sure with all the schools in Washington DC, they haven't eradicated all of it.

But how have you moved?

How do you guys move to address those issues?

Great question, Earl.

And first, before I get into that, I just want to say, as Stevie Wonder said, you all are the sunshine of my life.

And I think that it's so important that.

Ordinary people in the communities who are defending their families and making sure that the true North Star is protecting the health, you know, where what's going to make it happen.

And that was true in DC and that'll be true in Milwaukee and in other communities across Wisconsin and the country.

Nothing substitutes for that.

But what the parents did is they figured out pretty early on that the schools were.

giving them the Okidok that they were cooking the books, so to speak, on lead and water exposures at the tap.

And so they organized, you know, not every parent, but a bunch of parents got together and organized with subject matter experts and and other people to really understand the lay of the land and the science and went through the parent teachers.

uh organization uh built their own organization and uh you know started making demands not only of the schools but of our uh city council members and our mayor and and others to do a better job in fact we uh in dc one of the things that we figured out really early on is that the school system was recruiting parents to

flush the water for several hours, the day before, and the morning of to reduce the lead levels.

And after we blew the whistle on that in our local newspapers and said that wasn't going to work, then they started doing the wrong type of testing.

And then all along, they were claiming that when they took one test or two tests, that that said forever what the lead level would be, even though we knew that the science said that

to get within 20% of the average out of any one tap in worst case scenarios could take 1200 tests over time.

So testing is not really a good way to establish whether you have lead coming out of a tap and people don't know that.

So understanding and working with people to understand that filters were the most important thing.

Like when a mask comes down for oxygen out of the airplane.

They say, you got to put yours on first.

Well, this is the first step that we do while we're looking to get the let out of our schools.

The thing that we wanted that parents really did is they said, how do we make sure that all of the sources are tested comprehensively that you don't just discount one source because they all can contribute to the problem and you can't have a lead free school until it's actually.

really glad for you.

You know, Robert, it

seems inconceivable that this could happen and that there are elected officials and people in places that are responsible for your children, that they would even stoop so low to do these kinds of things.

It's almost unbelievable.

Well, my experiences have been

that they stoop low, they lie, they do tell tremendous lies.

My first experience as a capillary marine was living through water toxic episodes at the base and being lied to about that.

And then dealing with the lead poisoning issue in Milwaukee.

You saw how they were lying at the.

Barrett administration, you witnessed that.

I mean, even the health department commissioner went on CBS News and told people publicly in an interview, he can guarantee that there's no lead in the water.

And so, yes, that is the MO of a lot of these municipalities in Water Utility.

Not just in Milwaukee, but across the country.

And so it is important that people understand the science, they understand the language, they understand how the politics play out.

To be able to get past a lot of the obfuscation, a lot of the bold-faced lies that they tell.

And once that is exposed, then they begin to make, then you begin to see some of the changes.

In the Barrett administration, we saw people abandoning ship.

Everybody was all of a sudden resigning.

Everybody was all of a sudden leaving office.

Nobody wanted to be around.

Finally, the mayor was offered a position over in Luxembourg and he went on to eat his vener's whistle.

So a lot of mine is that if you're able to get past a lot of the BS that these people say and show them

that you know what you're talking about and show them.

You have the proof to prove that they're lying.

They will back off.

Well, you know, guys, let me say this.

Robert, make sure that Dr. Christian gets my information because I want her to know.

to utilize this this show and this radio station as you know as we move forward because our radio station is willing to support this and especially the Earl Ingram show so thank all of you guys it's too short as always but I'll see you guys again next Wednesday get the lead out see you guys all right up next Dr. Robert Craig executive director of citizen action in you on the Earl Ingram show