A 2018 EdSource special report on lead in California school drinking water called Tainted Taps has been named a finalist in the Visual Storytelling category by Education Writers Association (EWA). The report exposes loopholes in the state’s testing methodology and strategies implemented (such as “flushing”) to deal with aging infrastructure that puts young people at risk – disproportionately those in urban areas including parts of Oakland and Los Angeles which have had very high lead levels reported.

My work on the project included page design, photo editing, collaborating on an interactive map of lead test results at schools across California and an interactive table, submitting music for the animated video created by my coworker Yuxuan and a short informational video, teaming up on infographics … and last but not least, coming up with “Tainted Taps” as the project tagline.

Nico Savidge did the on-the-ground reporting; Yuxuan Xie the heavy lifting on the interactive map, as well as creating an animated video explainer; and Danny Willis did the data.

We also made the entire report available in Spanish (translation work provided by Zaidee Stavely), which meant setting up the EdSource website to house bilingual content. I did this using Polylang, a solid and well-organized WordPress plugin, customizing our theme to work with it.