What Kentucky publishes about lead testing in its schools’ drinking water, what those numbers cover, and how we checked it. One row of a 51-jurisdiction survey, verified jurisdiction by jurisdiction rather than compiled from a single list.
KentuckyPublishes for some schools
Published action level, as verified in 2026: Not recorded by this survey.
Action levels are not comparable between jurisdictions: across the 51 we surveyed they run from 1 ppb to 20 ppb, so a share of results above “the action level” measures the threshold as much as it measures the water. We never rank states on it. Where a jurisdiction explains how its own level was set, the verified research note at the foot of this page records the explanation verbatim.
Kentucky publishes results, but we have not yet ingested them row by row, so this page carries no counts or rates for it — only what the survey verified about the publication itself. We publish a figure once we hold the rows it is computed from, and not before. The jurisdiction’s own results are linked below.
The baseline is the National Association of State Boards of Education’s 2021 survey. Every 2026 value below was re-checked for this survey; a value that did not move is a finding too.
Changed since the 2021 baseline: publishes results.
Our field note for Kentucky, published verbatim rather than summarised. Where it quotes a figure from a source, that is the source’s own number reproduced as we recorded it, not a rate we computed — everything we compute states its denominator and its unit.
RESOLVED AT SOURCE 2026-08-15, in a browser: the ArcGIS layer DOES carry results, and Kentucky publishes. This was the survey's lone Unknown. EEC's programme page (eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/Water/Drinking/Pages/school-lead-testing.aspx) links a dashboard titled 'Lead Sampling Results in Drinking Water Outlets at Kentucky Schools and Childcare Facilities', backed by the public feature service watermaps.ky.gov/arcgis/rest/services/GrantData/WIIN_Facility/FeatureServer. Queried directly: layer 0 = 263 facilities (177 SCH + 86 CCF), table 4 = FixtureResults with 2,626 rows across 226 distinct facilities, EVERY row carrying a non-null INIRESULT in ppb -- so this is not a Georgia-shaped live-but-empty portal, which is the specific thing that had to be ruled out. Range 0.5-691 ppb; 121 fixtures at or above 5 ppb, 31 at or above 15. Sample dates 2023-03-31 to 2026-06-02, hence vintage current. COVERAGE IS partial: KY Division of Water runs this as an explicitly 'voluntary lead sampling program for schools and childcare facilities' funded by the 2016 WIIN Act, and 177 schools is a fraction of Kentucky's ~1,477 public schools -- a voluntary grant round is the rubric's definition of partial. dataTier is T1: the results are a queryable ArcGIS REST endpoint returning JSON, not a document. ACTION LEVEL DELIBERATELY UNSET: the EEC page discusses setting an 'Action Level Exceedance' but states no number, so there is nothing to record. ⚠️ EPA's index still marks Kentucky '(coming soon)' -- this row is now direct evidence that the marker means 'no WIIN-grant portal' and NOT 'publishes nothing', which is the premise the Alaska/Connecticut/Missouri rows rested on. ⚠️ NOT INGESTED, but noted for whoever does: 1,754 of the 2,626 readings sit at exactly 0.5 ppb (66.8%) with none below, which is the unflagged-reporting-floor signature of methodology 5b -- treat as not determinate until KY publishes a limit.
TapWaterData Editorial. "School drinking water lead testing: Kentucky." TapWaterData national school drinking-water lead testing database. Last updated 2026-08-15. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://www.tapwaterdata.com/school-lead-testing/kentucky
@misc{tapwaterdata_school_lead_2026,
author = {TapWaterData Editorial},
title = {School drinking water lead testing: Kentucky},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://www.tapwaterdata.com/school-lead-testing/kentucky}},
note = {Last updated 2026-08-15. Licensed under CC BY 4.0}
}Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence — free to republish, chart or build on with attribution. Last updated .
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