Environmental safety lax at school sites
According to a story in today’s Bergen Record:
Safety testing lax on new school sites
http://www.northjersey.com/education/educationnews/Clifton_school_site_lacks_test_for_pesticides.html“Nearly four years ago, Clifton voters approved an $11 million plan to convert an old industrial building into classrooms for 500 high school students.
They hadn’t been told that groundwater on the 3-acre site had excessive levels of pesticides, nor that arsenic and other poisons were present at elevated levels and that other dangerous organic compounds had seeped into the ground just outside the building’s rear entrance.A review of the controversial [school construction] project by The Record reveals that Clifton school officials recommended the property to voters without doing a single environmental test or obtaining a sign-off from state environmental regulators.
In interviews last week, state officials acknowledged that there are essentially no regulations stipulating that school districts test potential school sites before seeking voter approval.
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“This is more than a crisis. This is a tragedy, a failure of our government at a time when we need protection more than ever,” said Roy Jones, a board member of the non-profit New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance. “If the state can’t protect us on stuff like this, what’s the use in having a government at all?
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“State officials have their heads buried in the sand on these cases because they know that the problem is a potentially huge one that will be very hard, and expensive, to address,” said Bill Wolfe, a former official of the state Department of Environmental Protection who now runs the non-profit advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
For links to documents and an analysis of the underlying causes of the problems, see:
A Tale of Two Toxic Schools
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/02/a_tale_of_two_toxic_schools_ho.html
This is just more evidence of the SCC failure & waste.
Citizens, especially children who are more vulnerable, should not be exposed to these health hazards.
Yes, it is expensive to clean a contaminated site; but it’s even more expensive to deal with it after construction, not to mention the PR blowback.
No surprises here. This is NJ, what would you expect?
I bet our AG will not be able to find any criminal wrong doing. Her head is stuck in guv’s @#$%^&. She sees no wrong, hears no wrong, and says nothing is wrong.
JerseyOpine – don’t know if this was an SCC funded project or not, but SCC has wasted millions of dollars dedicated to education on the cleanup costs at sites that should never had been selected in the first place.
That’s why we are calling for a siting process with state standards. Contaminated sites would be allowed only as an option of last resort, after a School Board demonstrated that no other non contaminated sites exist.
Parents and teachers must be involved in these decisions as well – in this case, the school district withheld information from the public and DEP about contamination for YEARS.
Compare that to the fact that the Paramus Superintendent was fired for a not telling teachers/parents about a small pile of soil.
njyikes – thanks for the comment –
I agree that AG is not likely to initiaite an investigation on her own, but maybe she would if she or Corzine were pressured publicly to do so.
I don’t agree that this is not a surprise – most parents would be livid if they learned that in the newspaper.
This won’t stop until the state enforces it’s ethics rules on employees and those that do work for the state. At DEP, there are still those who cozy up to private firms and then go work for them after retiring with their state pension. There is at least one former DEP employee now working for a engineering consulting firm that did SCC work. In his position at DEP, he was able to provide expertise to the SCC and his new employer. And this same person will probably pay a large role in his new employer’s proposal to provide contracted scientists to the state (the DEP’s real reason for pushing the “Licensed Site Professional” bill). And……..when others at DEP raise the issue of the conflict, they are retaliated against. You need to be deaf, dumb, and blind to work at DEP if you have a conscience.
unprovincial – public outrage has an effect on these abuses.
Just look at what happened in Paramus.
If the press does its job and DEP employees with a conscience engage in the art of what we at PEER call “anonymous activism”, we can make positive change and hold the bad guys accountable.
Invitation here to DEP staffers in the know:
give me a call (609-397-8213) or drop me and email, or post some hot documents is the mail: PO Box #1, Ringoes, NJ 08551.
Legal confidentiality provided to all sources.
We don’t teach enough skepticism in our schools, our churches preach “faith,” our politicians preach “trust me,” and in the end we get it in the end in a manner of speaking. So what’s the solution here? Why not start with the Department of Education, then DEP and then the SCC to develop a rational approach to school siting. WE SHOULD NOT BE USING CONTAMINATED SITES FOR SCHOOL BUILDINGS EVER. Decontamination is never foolproof, always subject to error and mismanagement and is pointless where there are other options. Who owns these properties? Well connected Friends Of types? As a citizen with some common sense I cannot imagine putting vulnerable kids at more risk by building on a contaminated site it is idiotic to believe that it can be brought back. So let’s build a public policy that demands a clean-up but also commits to a no build policy for at least say 20 years. I have no science here just common sense reinforced by so many tales of failed decontamination AFTER the school/facility is built! Is it so hard to say no to stupid ideas?
I wish to apologize to anyone offended by my “deaf, dumb, and blind” comment. A more appropriate expression would have been “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil”. No offense to the mute was intended. And while we’re on the subject of physical challenges, I’d like to point out that the state’s big push toward diversity, including the hiring of people without the necessary academic qualifications the past few years, does not seem to include the physically challenged. DEP is a state agency with over 2,000 employees and not a single one of them in a wheelchair.