State Senate Cmte. says its ‘okay’ to build school on former hazardous waste disposal site
8th June 2015 · 0 Comments
By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
Aimed to prevent the construction of schools on land that was formerly used for hazardous waste disposal, House Bill 180 failed to move past the Senate Education Committee during a hearing last week.
No member moved to vote on Rep. Joseph Bouie Jr.’s (D-New Orleans) bill that had 39 co-sponsors and passed unanimously in the House in May.
“Why would any responsible community in the 21st century build a school on a toxic waste site and expose children and generations of children to such toxins?” Bouie asked, as he described his research into the issue. “And second, why would any authority approve to build a school on land formerly used as a waste site?”
Numerous legislators argued that the wording of the bill was too broad and “wide open,” and could cause unnecessary impediments to future development.
The proposed bill prohibits “the new construction of a school for grades pre-kindergarten through 12th grade on land formerly used in the disposal, storage or deposition of sewage sludge, solid waste, or hazardous waste … or oilfield wastes.”
Opponents also argued that the bill was aimed at New Orleans, and was overreaching if made statewide.
Nearly all of New Orleans is contaminated with lead, one senator noted.
The supporters of the bill focused on two cases in New Orleans: the historic and disastrous building of Moton Elementary on top of the former Agriculture Street Landfill, and the Recovery School District’s (RSD) current plan to rebuild Booker T. Washington High School on the site of former Clio St./Silver City Dump, where at one time 100 tons of toxic waste were deposited daily for over 40 years. The dump operated from the late 1890s to the early 1930s.
Booker opened in 1942 and was demolished in 2013.
Sen. Conrad Appel (R-Metairie) questioned whether there had been any health effects on the former Booker students, of which Bouie was one. Bouie said that there isn’t research tracking that, but that he had former classmates who died relatively young due to cancer and respiratory illness, though there was no way to make the connection.
A representative from the Board of Secondary and Elementary Education (BESE) said that they defer such decisions to the “experts.” A representative of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) said that the planned remediation was sufficient. The plan is to remove three feet of soil, insert a barrier, and replace it with six feet of clean fill.
But scientist Wilma Subra testified that vertical migration of toxins is still possible. Subra listed the heavy metals and other toxins that were found at massively unacceptable levels as far as 15 feet beneath the Booker site.
Monique Harden, a lawyer who spoke in support of the bill, reminded legislators that there are “no safe levels” of toxins, and that the remediation plans are insufficient from the beginning because the testing has not been extensive enough to identify whether there are other categories of toxins in the soil, such as pesticides.
The RSD continues to refuse to consider an alternative building site, and plans to relocate the students at Walter L. Cohen High School, an existing school Uptown that is not located on a former toxic dump.
This article originally published in the June 8, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
