The Karns City School District is passing out bottles of water to teachers and students at the district’s three schools in response to a recent round of water testing.

The district hired Gannett Fleming, the same company that has tested in Butler, South Butler and Mars school districts, to conduct drinking water testing in all of its buildings. This is the second round of testing after tests in August returned positive results for lead and copper.

In this round of testing on Sept. 18, the company found six water sources with copper levels over the 1.3 milligrams per liter limit and 12 sources with lead levels over the 0.015 milligrams per liter limit.

Water fixtures have been turned off, the district reported.

The district informed parents of testing results in a letter Thursday. Superintendent Eric Ritzert said they’ll keep parents up to date.

“We’re going to be looking at replacing fixtures,” Ritzert said. “Then we plan to continue flushing out our water (fixtures) and conducting more testing.”

All three of the district’s school buildings had too much lead and copper in the test results.

Any source of drinking water has been turned off, Ritzert said, and the district is spending about $1,000 a week on bottled water for students and staff for the foreseeable future. They’re also buying bags of ice for use in kitchens.

“We’re taking all precautions,” he said.

The visiting team locker room at the high school had the highest levels of copper found in the testing, and Sugar Creek Elementary’s Room 53 had the highest lead levels found.

A new state law requires public schools to test for dangerous metals before the school year begins. Butler School District is also dealing with some high lead levels and is continuing testing.

So far, Karns City testing costs total $6,500, but Ritzert said he expects that figure to grow.

The testing timeline remains unclear. Ritzert said the process could last several weeks, or a couple of months.

The district’s elementary buildings will likely take less time to resolve than the high school, he said.

All drinking water sources are shut off, but the district still has some water sources that need a first round of testing. They plan on clearing zones of school campuses and reopening sections at a time once tests come back clean.

Ritzert said they have not yet identified the source of the lead and copper. He said tests conducted in the past did not show these current lead and copper levels.

The test results are posted at kcasdk12.org.