Loophole let DOE take years to test toxic siteBy Nikki Dowling Posted 8/24/11
Correction appended The Department of Education has announced that it will relocate the Bronx New School, PS 51, which it failed to test for nearly 20 years, to a school more than two miles away because PS 51 is too toxic to open in its current location at 3200 Jerome Ave. in September. Earlier this month, officials revealed that they found unacceptably high levels of the toxic chemical trichloroethylene in the air and soil surrounding PS 51. The school formerly housed a lamp-making manufacturer and was listed as one of the city’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act sites, meaning it housed or produced hazardous waste. And while the Department of Education said it will test sooner in the future, the DOE may be the very reason it took so long to identify the school as toxic to begin with. Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced the relocation to St. Martin of Tours School, at East 182nd Street and Crotona Avenue, and spoke to parents at a meeting for PS 51 families at the Bronx High School of Science on Aug. 18. But he failed to answer questions about why PS 51 was not tested for decades and whether students are in danger. Trichloroethylene, or TCE, is an industrial solvent that can enter air or water, although it was not found in PS 51’s water source. TCE exposure can result in dizziness, headaches, confusion, euphoria, facial numbness and weakness. It can also cause developmental issues and cancer, although the most serious health risks are generally caused only by TCE-contaminated water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The school was tested in February as part of a routine lease-renewal procedure that was instituted in 2003 under mayoral control. The DOE did not act sooner because of a 1988 state law that requires environmental review of only newly built schools, not leased spaces. The New York Lawyers for the Public Interest have lobbied for a bill that would require the DOE to submit a site plan to the mayor and City Council for review before opening a school at a leased site. This would close the so-called “leasing loophole," making the environmental review process for new and leased schools the same. “The DOE has fought it for a long time,” NYLPI staff attorney Dawn Philip said of the bill.
KeywordsDepartment of Education, DOE, Bronx New School, PS 51, trichloroethylene, TCE, toxic, Nikki Dowling
1 comment on this story
|
Add your comment
|
|
|
TCE is dangerous, especially to children. Children's immune systems are not developed enough to effectively dispose of toxins, like TCE. TCE is not only dangerous in the water humans drink, but is also dangerous when it is in the air we breathe....such as in the Bronx New School. In fact, TCE is perhaps most dangerous when it is in the air, because we are breathing all the time. With this in mind, the failure of DOE to test the school for all those years is unacceptable, especially since it was public information that the school site had been home to an industrial plant that used dangerous chemicals, including TCE I'll bet the law does not say that DOE can refuse to test a school even if publically-available information says that the school may be dangerous to the children attending it. Who decided to turn a toxin-laced, industrial site into a school in the first place, and then not to test it to see if it was safe for children? Also, what's the excuse for sending the children to the school last semester even AFTER the air and soil at the school were proven (by February) to be dangerous? In my experience as an environmental lawyer, one of the most galling things to confront are so-called "leaders"--in business or government-- who do not take responsibility for the dangers that they have created. Here, we have adults who are paid to protect children, and yet are reaching for technicalities in the law to justify their failure to do their jobs. The families whose children attended Bronx New School must be very wary about trusting what they hear now from these same officials who are responsible for sending these children to a dangerous school. Those officials will be tempted to provide "information" that excuses the bad decisions that they have made, when they should be providing information about what really happened here, and how to protect the children who were needlessly exposed to dangerous chemicals at their school. Wednesday, August 24, 2011|Report this