BUTLER TWP — The Butler School Board Monday night voted to submit a letter to Pennsylvania American Water committing the district to tie in to a new public water line to be extended to Summit Township Elementary School.

Water at Summit elementary, which is on a well, has high levels of lead and copper, according to recent multiple tests. The untreated well water has also tested positive for E. coli bacteria.

The school board in February opted to close the school temporarily and have the teachers and students use the vacant Broad Street Elementary School.

Though the costs and many of the details associated with the public water project are still unclear, officials said they are hopeful that construction can be finished in time for the first day of the 2017-18 school year.

“They are going to do what they can to get it there for the start of school next year,” Assistant Superintendent Brian Slamecka said Monday.

Slamecka said that he and board member Neil Convery recently attended a meeting with the water company and township and state officials.

The water company’s representatives said that once it received a letter of commitment from the district, it was ready to start engineering and design work on a project to extend a line from Hinchberger Road to Herman Road up Bonniebrook Road to the intersection with Brinker Road. The water company would cover all of the costs to extend the line that far, but the district would have to pay to have the line go down Brinker Road and connect to the school, Slamecka said.

The board had previously voted to authorize Acting Superintendent William Pettigrew to work with attorney Anthony Ditka as bond counsel and Stantec as architects if necessary for a water line tap-in project.

It was unknown Monday how a water line extension would impact other residences and businesses on those roads.

Slamecka said he has been in frequent contact with Eric Buzza, operations specialist with Gannet Fleming, who has said that tying in to public water would be the best long-term solution to the building’s water problems.

“This can get us out of water testing. We can get out of the water business with this,” Slamecka said.

Board member Suzie Bradrick said that the district’s well water problems have been a “nightmare” and officials should do everything they can to prevent problems from happening again.

“I don’t want to put our kids through this again, I don’t want to put our families through this again,” she said.

The district is still waiting for final reports from Gannet Fleming and Book & Proch Well Drilling which have been investigating the school’s pipes and its two wells to make recommendations for repairs.

Book & Proch, which was hired by the board at its meeting last week on a $9,655 contract, has been investigating the school’s working well and also its older well that was not in use.

Its preliminary findings were that both wells had leaks and holes in their casings that would need to be repaired, Slamecka said.

At a meeting in February, engineers said that corrosive well water had caused lead soldering from the building’s plumbing to dissolve into the water.