Providing Students with Adequate School Drinking Water Access in an Era of Aging Infrastructure: A Mixed Methods...

Ensuring students' access to safe drinking water at school is essential. However, many schools struggle with aging infrastructure and subsequent water safety problems and have turned to bottled water delivery systems. Little is known about whether such systems are feasible and effective in providing adequate student water access. This study was a mixed-methods investigation among six schools in an urban district in the U.S. with two types of water delivery systems: (1) tap water infrastructure, with updated water fountains and bottle fillers, and (2) bottled water coolers. We measured students' water consumption and collected qualitative data from students and teachers about their perceptions of school drinking water. Student water consumption was low-between 2.0 (SD: 1.4) ounces per student and 2.4 (SD: 1.1) ounces per student during lunch. Students and teachers reported substantial operational hurdles for relying on bottled water as a school's primary source of drinking water, including difficulties in stocking, cleaning, and maintaining the units. While students and teachers perceived newer bottle filler units positively, they also reported a distrust of tap water. Bottled water delivery systems may not be effective long-term solutions for providing adequate school drinking water access and robust efforts are needed to restore trust in tap water.