GUILDERLAND — School district administrators got an early start on the lead testing that New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has required them to begin by  month’s end. This summer, when Guilderland tested 19 spots across the district, said Assistant Superintendent for Business Neil Sanders at Guilderland’s board of education meeting Tuesday night, it found measurable amounts of lead contamination in five of the school kitchens tested.

The highest level was found in a sink in the kitchen of Lynnwood Elementary.

All of the levels were below the threshold of 15 parts per billion; under new state guidelines, remediation is required for levels over this threshold.

All five of those schools’ kitchens were immediately repiped, Sanders told The Enterprise on Wednesday. The plan from this point is to remediate only the water outlets that show levels above the threshold. The work done so far cost between $15,000 and $18,000 and has been tied in directly to the district’s ongoing capital project, according to Clifford Nooney, the district’s buildings and grounds supervisor.

Nooney explained on Wednesday that the work done involved replacing the older pipes in the ceilings. “My assumption, and this was an assumption,” he said, “was that we have possibly older fittings in the ceiling. And that’s actually what we piped around. We eliminated those older sections of pipe in the ceiling, and tied in the new.” Faucets were not replaced.

Those older sections in the ceilings were replaced with new pipes, Nooney said, made of “copper and/or plastic.”

He said, “When we retested, that made a dramatic difference.”

The level in the Lynnwood kitchen sink initially tested at 0.012, or 12 parts per billion, according to a list of preliminary test results provided to The Enterprise.

After repiping, Sanders said, the level at Lynnwood was retested and now measures “less than 0.001,” or less than 1 part per billion. He noted that it is not possible to receive a score of 0; the lowest possible reading is “less than 0.001,” which can mean that there is no lead, or can mean that the level is not high enough to measure.

Sanders said that none of these results were comparable to the 1,800 parts per billion recently discovered in a kitchen faucet in Voorheesville’s elementary school.

Pine Bush Elementary was not included in the preliminary testing. Built in the mid-1990s, it is newer than the district’s other, half-century-old buildings. Its pipes are made mainly of copper, Nooney said. Pine Bush will be included in the first round of the more thorough testing to come, he said, “although we do not have to, based on the age of the building.” He does not anticipate any problem at Pine Bush, Nooney said, but the testing will be done to “reassure everybody.”

If the results at Pine Bush show no measurable lead, as expected, Nooney said, he believes that the district can apply for a waiver that will free it from the need to retest it in the future.

Westmere Elementary’s preliminary levels were all lower than at the other elementary schools tested, at 1 ppb. Nooney said that extensive plumbing work was done at Westmere during a capital project of 2009 and 2010, and that he attributes the lower levels found there to that newer piping. He said that thorough testing of all outlets will be done at Westmere, as elsewhere.

The district is already working with the engineering firm C. T. Male, Sanders said on Wednesday, to map out the thorough testing to come. Nooney said that that testing will probably begin early next week. C. T. Male also monitors asbestos for the district, Nooney said, “so they’re familiar with our buildings.”

“We’ll be testing hundreds of samples here in the next few weeks,” Sanders said Wednesday.

He also explained the way that testing was done. An outlet is first run for 30 seconds. It then must sit there, unused, for at least eight hours. It is then turned on, and the water that comes out right away is used as the sample.

At the board meeting, Sanders explained that every outlet — every sink or fountain or spigot — will be coded by number and sampled, so that any results above the allowable threshold can be addressed.

In the thorough testing to come, the five kitchen sites that have already been tested, repiped, and then retested will not be tested again, Nooney said.

The school district was already doing “quite a bit of plumbing work across the district this summer” and had plumbers on site, so Nooney added this testing and repiping to their scope of work through the current capital project, since it fit the type of work already approved by the voters.

Sanders said that, although many of the district’s school buildings date back to the 1950s, many have been added onto since. “We’ve replaced plumbing in buildings; we’ve got newer sections of buildings. Not everything we have is 1950s vintage across the district,” he said.

But, Nooney acknowledged, it’s very possible that sites with levels above the 15 ppb threshold could be found over the next few weeks.

If there are any, he said, the district’s first step would be to immediately take those outlets out of service, and then look at what form their remediation could take; Nooney said that it could involve repiping or possibly the installation of filters.

Nooney said of the potential cost, “We’re going to have to cross that bridge as we go.”

He added, “There could be a potential for even a mini capital project. But we don’t have that information.”

Nooney said that he is “hopeful that there won’t be any” results above the 15 ppb threshold in the thorough testing to come.

All of the results from future testing will also be published, Sanders said, as required by law.

Sanders was asked if the district will remediate any future results similar to those already found in the Lynnwood kitchen, that are below the threshold, but still relatively high.

He said, “What we’re doing is following the regulations at this point. The regulation only requires remediation for above 15 parts per billion, so we’re, at this point, intending to follow the regulations.

“There’s a safety standard,” he said, “that’s been identified, that’s acceptable.”