Bills Would Put Greater Limits on School Sites

Where the Huntington Park Elks Lodge stood, the Los Angeles Unified School District saw a wonderful site for a new and badly needed elementary school.

What the district’s planners did not see--or as its critics charge, simply ignored--were the bright, red and white signs of the industrial plant next door that read, “Danger Cyanide.”

Despite repeated warnings over several months from the plant’s owner, the school district said it intended to go ahead with plans to place the new Bell Area Elementary School next to Industrial Steel Treating Co., which uses many toxic and explosive chemicals in its daily business.

Only after company President Ty Colbert hired prominent toxic law attorney Barry Groveman and pleaded with the district to send its Safety Department personnel to inspect the area did the district back down two weeks ago and agree that it was not a good location.

Purchased Land

But even that admission came only after the district closed the purchase of at least one of the parcels at the site and entered escrow to purchase several others.

The incident has led Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) to introduce a bill halting state funding for school construction until a district can prove that it has adequately surveyed the areas surrounding possible school sites for industrial dangers.

Hayden and other legislators fear that the Huntington Park example is not a simple or isolated case of bureaucratic bungling but rather is symptomatic of lax procedures in districts.

The issue of siting standards is being raised as the Los Angeles district is under heavy pressure to build more schools. The district has met vocal resistance from homeowners opposed to placing schools in residential neighborhoods and displacing residents. That, in turn, is forcing the district to increasingly look at sites in industrial areas.

But even as the Assembly--which now has at least three bills proposed to deal with this issue--wrestles with how to force some new procedures for site selection on school districts, some are already warning that standards should not be too stringent.

“In L.A., there are (industrial) plants all over the place,” said Stan Diorio, an aide to Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who was among the first to propose new laws for keeping schools at a healthy distance from toxic chemical use.

“If the regulations are too tough,” he said, “we may never build another school in Los Angeles again.”

The Assembly “will have to be very careful in (its) exuberance to protect children, to also protect the (statewide school) building program,” Diorio said.

Hayden said specific language for his proposal is still being developed but will include requirements that districts determine that schoolchildren not be exposed to chemicals listed as dangerous or harmful under the Prop. 65 guidelines, that it specifically consider past uses of the land to be acquired and that it survey land use in the surrounding neighborhood and improve methods of informing residents that a site in their area is being considered for a school.

In the case of the Bell Area Elementary School and an estimated eight to 10 other school sites around the district, the school board did not require environmental impact reports to be prepared, according to Douglas Brown, chief of the district’s Building Services Division.

In 1987, the Los Angeles district was faced with the prospect of finding 16 school sites quickly. To expedite the process, it scaled back its normal procedures, Brown said. The school board has since reimposed the requirement that environmental impact statements be produced before beginning efforts to purchase specific sites.

“Nothing is perfect,” Brown said. “But an environmental impact statement makes a quantum bound over” the limited survey done in the case of the Huntington Park location and the seven to nine other sites.

Still, Diorio said, regular Los Angeles school district procedures are also lacking. Even before the revelations of the Huntington Park site, “we were going to require that the Air Quality Management District do an analysis,” Diorio said.

The issue of drafting stiffer requirements for the school districts is a new one for legislators.

Previously, the concern was just the opposite. Before Hayden’s bill, legislation was primarily aimed at stopping industrial companies from building too close to existing schools.

For that fear there is an established precedent.

Last year, Plato Products, a metal-plating company in Glendora, was forced into agreeing to move after gases from its plant escaped and bothered children at a nearby school.

Last year, the Los Angeles school board was forced to close the Tweedy Elementary School in South Gate after chlorine gas escaped from a nearby Purex Corp. bleach plant. In 1986, a caustic chemical believed to have originated at the nearby Cooper Drum Co. began oozing through the same school’s grounds.

Just last month, health department officials raised concerns about possible effects of pollution from two Bell Gardens chrome factories on the Suava Elementary School.

In the case of Industrial Steel Treating in Huntington Park, there have been no incidents of leaks, spills or explosions, and the company has been at the same site for more than 30 years.

Truck Traffic

But company President Colbert said he worried that in the event of an earthquake or some other natural disaster, the chemicals used at his company could be dangerous to schoolchildren. He said he also worried about school buses dealing with the usual heavy truck traffic in and out of the industrial area.

He said that is why he brought the issue to the attention of the school district.

He first made phone calls to district officials in the fall of 1987. He followed that up with a letter in November and received the only response he has to date.

“They said it is too late now,” Colbert said.

Colbert wrote several more letters and finally convinced officials to send an inspector to his facility in February.

“They advised us that there may be a problem there,” said Robert Niccum, chief of land acquisitions for the school district.

As a result, the project is being canceled he said.

The one area property already acquired will now be sold, Niccum said.

Brown said that if Colbert had not been so insistent, the district “probably would have acquired more property before figuring the situation out.”

Despite their experience with the Elks Lodge site and Industrial Steel Treating, and the problems encountered by other schools in industrial areas, Niccum and Brown said industrial sites will continue to be the school district’s priority.

Brown said “no area has enough housing stock,” so building in residential areas will be a last resort.

“There is no good place to build a school,” Niccum said. “So, you look at the risks and take your best shot.”

Or as Brown put it: “If the chances of a problem are a million to one, we will still site” on an industrial location. “But if the chances are one in 10, then. . . . “