RSD moving forward with building school on toxic waste site
11th May 2015 · 0 Comments
By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
Despite strong evidence that dangerous toxins lurk in the soil as far as 15 feet below the surface of the site of the former Booker T. Washington High School, the Recovery School District is moving forward with plans to construct a new school on top of land once used as a city dump.
A panel of experts opposing the construction plan went to New Orleans City Council Chambers last Tuesday to bring their concerns to the members of the Public Works, Sanitation, and Environment Committee.
On Wednesday in Baton Rouge, the State Education Committee unanimously passed a bill (House Bill 180) introduced by state Rep. Joseph Bouie that would prohibit the construction of public schools on land “formerly used in the disposal, storage, or deposition of sewage sludge, solid waste, hazardous waste or oilfield waste.”
“Why would any responsible society or community want to risk their children or generations of children’s lives on toxic sites?” Bouie asked. Bouie is also a Booker alumnus.
Located at 2101 S. Roman St, Booker T was built in 1942, closed in 2004, and demolished in 2012. From the 1890s to the 1930s, the land beneath Booker was known as the Clio St./Silver City Dump. During its operation, it was the second largest landfill in the city, next to the Agriculture Street Landfill.
To address their own findings of numerous heavy metals and other toxins at rates well above the EPA standards, the RSD has proposed a remediation plan that will remove the top three feet of contaminated soil (except under the existing structures), insert a barrier made of geotextile material, and replace the toxic soil with six feet of clean soil. The plan has been approved by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ).
Opponents have expressed concern for the health and safety of construction workers, nearby residents, and the future inhabitants of the school.
Councilwoman Nadine Ramsey has introduced an amendment to the zoning ordinance that would require developers to disclose whether a site being proposed for any pre-K through 12th grade public school has previously been used for disposing hazardous waste.
In 2006, Ramsey was the Civil Court District Judge who ruled in favor of the defendants in a 1993 class action lawsuit against the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), and HANO insurers for knowingly allowing public and private housing, and Robert Russa Moton Elementary School to be built on top of the former Agriculture Street Landfill.
“What I want to make sure is that government is doing what it does with eyes wide open,” Ramsey said on Tuesday.
The RSD’s plan is to move the kids currently at Walter L. Cohen High School (now Cohen College Prep), which is located on a toxin-free site Uptown, into the new Booker building.
The plan for the Cohen facilities is to be “land banked,” defined as “the practice of aggregating parcels of land for future sale or development.”
For James Raby, a 1955 Cohen alum who, with the alumni association, has been at the forefront of the fight to stop new construction on the Booker site, there is only one viable explanation as to why the RSD would choose to move kids to the Booker site over keeping them at a potentially renovated Cohen: money.
“It’s not about Booker. It’s about Cohen, and the value of the Cohen land,” Raby said after Tuesday’s meeting.
Despite selling themselves as a temporary agency, the RSD has now successfully entrenched itself into the city indefinitely as “facility managers,” overseeing the expenditure of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Raby points out how much more desirable and lucrative upscale townhouses would be to the current Cohen neighborhood, located just two blocks off St. Charles Avenue, than a public high school.
“Can I prove it?” Raby asked. “No. But can anyone convince me otherwise? No.”
Asked directly why not just let the kids remain at Cohen and renovate it, Hawkins responded: “Construction of BTW [Booker] and the land banking of Cohen are decisions that were part of the Master Plan adopted in 2008 by the Orleans Parish School Board and BESE. The plan was amended in 2011 but these projects did not change. There were over 200 community meetings in 2008 and over 20 meetings in 2011. Sites were selected based on neighborhood demographics, size and condition of buildings, and community support.”
On demographics, Hawkins pointed to a decline in the total number in public school students from prior to Katrina. “Projections estimate that we will have around 50,000 public school students in 2020,” she wrote. “It is important to keep in mind that in 2005 there were 125 schools operating, that could house 125,000 students, however only 65,000 students were enrolled.”
However it is unclear how these numbers factor into the RSD’s justification for building a brand new, $55 million school on a former toxic dump.
And Raby doesn’t buy any of this as a valid reason to move kids from a non-toxic site to a toxic site. “It doesn’t take a card-carrying genius,” he said, to make the decision to not build a school on top of a dump. “Why close Cohen?”
To Monique Harden, attorney and co-director at Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, Hawkins’ response “shows the RSD’s complete lack of respect for valid community concerns for the safety of children, which are supported by House Bill 180 and the House Education Committee’s decision to pass the bill with no objection.”
Harden’s law firm is representing the Cohen alumni association in the lawsuit filed against the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) in an effort to halt the construction plans.
At the City Council meeting, Harden focused on the lead contamination. “There is no safe level of lead,” she reiterated.
However at the Booker site, Harden said that lead levels were 24 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard for playgrounds and LDEQ standard for residential land use.
Harden pointed to the proposed construction of Audubon Charter School at the Annunciation Street site. Lead levels there were found to be 19 times higher than the EPA standard, Harden told the council members, and directly because of that lead contamination the plan was cancelled in 2011.
“Apparently that’s not a concern to the RSD, but that is of concern to us,” Harden told the council members.
Harden also pointed out that at the proposed Audubon site, there weren’t any other toxic substances detected at higher levels than EPA standards. At the Booker site, according to Harden’s presentation, “Today, dangerous levels of lead, arsenic, mercury, other heavy toxic metals, and cancer-causing PAHs contaminate the soil from the ground surface down to at least 12 feet.”
From the results of the limited testing performed thus far by the RSD on the Booker site, Harden presented the following results:
Heavy metals – Lead 24 times above the standard, Antimony 21 times above the standard, Copper 7.9 times above the standard, Cadmium 3.7 times above the standard, Arsenic three times above the standard, Mercury 2.9 times above the standard, Barium 2.4 times above the standard, Zinc 2.1 times above the standard
PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) — Benzo(a)pyrene 16.7 times above the standard, Benzo(a)anthracene 11 times above the standard, Benzo(b)fluoranthene 10.6 times above the standard, Indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene 4.8 times above the standard.
Harden also noted that these only represent two categories of toxins, and that there are others for which have not been tested.
According to RSD chief of staff Laura Hawkins, “The Recovery School District takes the health and safety of our students and school communities seriously, and we are confident in our plan, which has been approved by both FEMA and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, to build a school that is a safe learning environment for students, and a space that will be an important community asset.”
Harden said that it was of great concern that the testing thus far has been “extremely limited.” The full extent of toxins in the soil and groundwater are still unknown, she said.
Harden pointed to Moton, and the nightmare that ensued for the school community and the residential community living on top of the former site of the Agriculture Street Dump.
The 1984 plan to remediate the soil for Moton construction “mirrors” the RSD’s 2015 plan, Harden said.
At both, there was “Limited testing of soil for lead and other toxic heavy metals as well as PAHs,” she said. At both, the plan called for the removal of three feet of contaminated soil.
History proves that the EPA is capable of egregious error: In 1986, The EPA inspected the site and determined it did not meet the requirements of a Superfund status.
Then, in 1993, the EPA re-inspected the landfill site and found more than 140 toxic materials, including 49 of which cause cancer.
In 1994, the EPA officially declared the area a Superfund Site due to massive soil contamination.
The Moton case study gives the opponents of building on the Booker site reason to not trust the federal, state, or local government when declarations are made that there are no safety concerns.
The people who lived on top of the landfill have heart-wrenching stories of chronic illness and financial devastation. Last month, the court ordered four former insurers of HANO to pay $14.2 million to more than 5,000 residents. However the recent settlement did not even give the residents anywhere close to money to relocate. The average award was a few thousand dollars each.
On Wednesday before the Louisiana House Education Committee in Baton Rouge, LDEQ assistant secretary Chance McNeely told the legislators that, regarding the LDEQ risk assessment process, “If the system says it’s safe, we stand by that system.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, speaking in Baton Rouge in support of Bill 180, disagreed. Of the RSD, Honoré said, “We question not only their science but their judgment.” Of the LDEQ, Honoré stated that, “They’ll approve a ham sandwich.”
Of the RSD’s own sampling, which McNeely said the LDEQ has oversight, McNeely stated that “We didn’t find anything that pointed to a toxic landfill or dump site there. So, you know, we’re talking about lead. Lead is the primary thing that we found. And we all know there’s lots of sources of lead, you know, that have existed. And you’re gonna pretty much find that in a lot of urban areas.”
Harden called the LDEQ’s decision to allow the RSD to move forward with remediation and construction plans “illegal and reckless.” She said that the EPA has not approved the “so-called remediation plan,” and that the EPA has been “unwilling to make a determination on the concerns we raised about the LDEQ’s failure to follow environmental laws and regulations.”
She expressed frustration with the persistent mistruths, such as the RSD listing the prior land use for the Booker site as “vacant.” It wasn’t vacant, Harden said, repeating the fact that it was the second-largest dump in New Orleans during the time of its operation.
And despite the undisputed proof that the Booker site used to be the Clio Street/Silver City Dump, RSD Superintendent Patrick Dobard wrote in a letter to Raby in August 2013 that, “The contaminants are the result of the automotive educational technology programming of the previous school program at the Booker T. Washington school, and we are confident that the remediation plan will eradicate any environmental concerns.”
At Tuesday’s meeting in New Orleans, Adam Babich, director of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, spoke about his previous role as a hazardous waste lawyer, and said that he was concerned about the site being used for a school.
The remediation steps are short-term, Babich said. The barrier between the clean soil and the contaminated soil would have to be continuously inspected and maintained, he described. Given the ever-shifting and sinking ground on which New Orleans rests, Babich noted that nothing is guaranteed. Subsidence means that ultimately, “All of the engineering barriers are going to fail,” Babich said.
And that upkeep could be very expensive with the potential for insufficient funding and neglect down the road.
The money and awareness might disappear, but the toxins never go away.
Babich said that the fact that the landfill is so old “scares me more,” than if it were a newer landfill with more scientifically updated and stringent regulations. Back then, everything was dumped together without a liner, he said.
He urged planners to “get a full understanding of the nature and extent of the contamination,” to involve the community, and to explore any and all alternatives.
Asked if there was risk of ongoing liability, Babich answered “Yes,” primarily pointing to a potential argument for “lack of due diligence.”
Dr. Beverly Wright, Executive Director for the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University, pointed to a history of “persistent injustices and widespread disinvestment of people of color.”
Given the Agriculture Street Landfill tragedy, Wright commented, “One would think that lessons have been learned. Apparently not.”
Wright pointed to the statistics that show Louisiana with a cancer rate 30 percent higher than the national average, and African Americans 30 percent higher than the state average. “If you think for a minute people are not being affected, you are speaking against science,” she said.
“There’s enough evidence to show it was a bad move to make. But we keep doing it.”
Raby called halting construction on the Booker site a “no-brainer.”
“Why are we having this conversation?” asked Rep. Wesley Bishop, D-New Orleans at the meeting in Baton Rouge. He said the state should just eat the $4 million already spent at the Booker site, and abandon plans to build at the location.
Yet, according to the response given by the RSD on Thursday, “Contracts for the remediation work are being processed and work will begin shortly. Construction on the facility itself will begin this fall.”
This article originally published in the May 11, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
