TOPSFIELD – Officials at East Range II CSD School say flushing and cleaning are under way to protect pupils and teachers from drinking tainted water.

Ken Kozak, a manager for pump maker Sunpro, said Tuesday that water was being run through a multistage treatment system. “We will be flushing the plumbing system throughout the school and we will be changing out certain elements in that plumbing system,” he said.

The contamination, Kozak said, was primarily at the top of the well. He said the PCB-contaminated oil that was floating on the top of the well was removed first. “Then there is a little floating layer that is left, and … when they pulled the pump out of the pipe, it probably sloshed some oil onto the walls of the well. So we are washing and cleaning that.”

After the well is cleaned and flushed, Kozak said, the company will clean all water faucets inside the school. They will be tested to make certain they are free of contaminants.

Then the company will install a multistage carbon treatment system inside the school’s pump system “so that the water that first comes out of the well will first pass through this carbon treatment system,” Kozak said.

“My concern on all of these is that if a drop of oil is hung up somewhere, it is going to go through the carbon system.”

The manufacturer of the old pump will pay the cost of the cleanup, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The old pump’s manufacturer, F.E. Meyers of Ashland, Ohio, referred a phone call to its parent company, Pentair, of St. Paul, Minn. Mark Cain, a Pentair spokesman, confirmed the company would pay for the cleanup.

Chuck Murphy, the school’s teaching principal, said that in addition to the cleaning of the water system, new coils would be installed in the school’s boiler heating system. “They won’t leave until the water passes a very comprehensive water test,” Murphy said.