Harvard Pays $4,000 Fine to Settle Asbestos Case With EPA

The federal Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that it has settled an action for violation of asbestos safety regulations against the Harvard School, a prestigious private boys school in Studio City.

The school paid a $4,000 fine and agreed to remove some asbestos, take precautions with the remainder and file reports required by federal regulations, an EPA spokesman said.

The agency issued an administrative complaint against the school in August.

Asbestos was commonly used as a building-insulation material until recent years, when regulations were imposed because researchers linked breathing asbestos fibers to lung cancer.

About 65% of the schools in the EPA’s Region 9--covering California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii--have failed to comply with some part of the asbestos regulations, said an EPA spokesman, Terry Wilson. He said it was not known how many had been fined.

Rob Levin, Harvard School business manager, said the agency “made a mountain out of a molehill.” The school failed to conduct a federally required survey and file the necessary report because it never received the EPA’s original notice, sent to public school officials in 1983, he said.

Since being cited, the school has spent about $10,000 on surveys and corrective work, Levin said. A small amount of asbestos insulation will be stripped from water pipes during the Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations, he said, and some areas containing asbestos insulation, such as crawl spaces, will be sealed.

Most of the asbestos in the school covers steel support beams in two classroom buildings constructed in the 1960s, he said. The asbestos is not loose, is shielded by false ceilings and cannot get into the air-circulation system, he said. Under its agreement with the EPA, the school will monitor it, train maintenance workers in safe procedures and file regular reports with the agency, he said.

Letters describing the EPA action were sent to parents of the 815 students who attend class on the 22-acre campus on Coldwater Canyon Avenue and to all school employees, Levin said, “and we have yet to receive inquiry one.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District found asbestos insulation in almost all of its 614 schools when the EPA program began, district spokesman Bill Rivera said. Remedial action was taken and there are usually about “half a dozen to a dozen” schools at a time out of compliance with the regulations for failure to meet reporting requirements, he said.