The Honorable President

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW,

Washington, DC 20500

RE: Clean Water

Dear Mr./Madam President,

My name is Sarah Templer and I live in Miami, Florida and am a 12th grade student at Mourning Senior High School. I am writing to you to ask for attention to be paid to providing clean, safe water to public facilities like middle schools and high schools nationwide. An important bill that addresses this and may help solve the issue is H.R.4470, or the Safe Drinking Water Act Improved Compliance Awareness Act.

Recently, there was a crisis in Flint, Michigan regarding water quality. Their specific issue was mostly with lead contamination and the lack of corrosion inhibitors, as well as aging pipes that let heavy metal contaminants into the drinking water. This issue of water contamination is a problem in public schools as well. This problem is particularly dangerous because of the fact that the people in the schools who are most susceptible to contamination are children and adolescents, and because they are still developing, the contaminants are even more damaging than they would be otherwise.

For a personal example, when I was in middle school, I pressed the water fountain connected to the woodshop room and the water that came out was white and murky. Now, in my high school, many classmates of mine refuse to drink water from the school fountains because is tastes dirty or metallic and is not clear.

This is problem for multiple reasons, including that poorer students who may not be able to bring new bottles of water every day may be forced to drink the school water which is suspected to be unsafe. On the other hand, students can refuse to drink it become dehydrated during the day because they have no clean water access, and this dehydration can lead to lower school performance and lower scores and grades, less attention, and increased fatigue. In both cases, students are at risk and there is no solution besides bringing multiple bottles of water to school, which is bulky, or buying a persona filter, which is expensive. These temporary fixes are not sustainable, which is why a permanent solution is needed and why H.R.4470 needs to be seriously implemented.

The children in middle and high schools are the future of the country, and the schools they attend should be able to not only provide an excellent education, but also provide for the basic needs of the student body, like safe water at all times.

Thank you for your time, and my contact information is below:

Sarah Templer

3260 NE 164th Street

North Miami Beach, FL 33160

[email protected]