Few of Nation’s Schools Meet Deadline for Asbestos Cleanup

One third of the nation’s 100,000 school buildings reportedly contain friable asbestos, yet fewer than half have met the first deadline of the new Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act requiring the cleanup of asbestos in classrooms.

These findings, included in a survey conducted by Kaselaan & D’Angelo Associates Inc., a national environmental engineering company, and MWW/Strategic Communications, a leading environmental communications firm, have been presented to Rep. James Florio (D-N.J.), chief sponsor of the law, for further action by Congress to ensure that the 15 million children attending these schools will be protected from hazardous asbestos.

“California reflected a 65% non-compliance rate, the highest among the states in the nation,” said Chip D’Angelo, president of K & D. “And it’s troubling that only 40% of the schools nationwide have completed abatement management plans,” he added. “The results are not surprising, since it appears the schools were given confusing, often conflicting information.”

Based on interviews with state asbestos officials conducted during November, the survey reveals that about 40% of the nation’s schools have submitted management plans to state-appointed coordinators, roughly the same percentage of schools that have made a deferral request, and that more than 20% of the schools nationwide apparently have disregarded the law entirely, submitting neither completed plans nor deferral applications.

A spokesman for Rep. Florio said the congressman’s reaction to the non-compliance rate was guarded. “We have to learn more about why so many schools are failing to comply. Are they confused, unwilling or have they not been notified?”

Public and private schools in several states, including California, New Jersey and Texas, had compliance rates of about half or less, the survey reported. In California, less than one-quarter of the schools submitted management plans and almost two-thirds of the schools did nothing.

Under the asbestos act, signed by President Reagan in 1986 with published regulations issued by the EPA in October, 1987, all of the nation’s public and private elementary and secondary schools were required to inspect their buildings for asbestos and submit a completed management plan to each state governor’s designate by Oct. 12, 1988. Congress amended the law in September, allowing schools to request deferral until May 9, 1989.

Robert Sommer, senior vice president at MWW and a former congressional staff aide who authored the asbestos act, said management plans are critical in ensuring that hazardous asbestos is properly abated. “If the plans are faulty, the resulting work can cause more problems than it solves,” he said.

Richard Steffen, principal consultant for the State Assembly Office of Research, believes that proper implementation of the new law may be doomed to failure. For one thing, schools are under funded and unable to provide competent staff for professional inspection and removal of hazardous substances, often relegating such tasks to untrained maintenance people.

“It is necessary to train the infrastructure to deal with the asbestos problem in order to prevent premature and inadequate removal, not to mention a total waste of money. While the law’s intent is good, the consequence may well be turning a mini problem into a major serious one.”

Steffen said a proper review of the management plans should include a hands-on inspection of schools to determine the adequacy of proposed plans, “otherwise it’s just words on paper.”

He noted that Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-San Francisco), a co-author of Proposition 79 (1988 School Facilities Bond Act), designating $100 million in funds for assessment and abatement of hazardous asbestos materials, which passed on the Nov. 8 ballot, concurs. She also proposed a ruling establishing a mini-Osha (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) to carry out this review function but the suggestion was rejected by the Office of Local Assistance.

L.A. Schools Remove Asbestos

Steffen said California has had a history of non-compliance. In 1982 when the Environmental Protection Agency required all schools to check for friable asbestos on the premises, only 30% complied.

On the positive side, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation, with 10,000 school buildings, not only responded to the 1982 Asbestos in Schools Rule to identify friable asbestos but went a step further by removing friable asbestos to which children and staff were exposed.

“Some of the worst problems arise from sprayed-on asbestos but fortunately we found little of that in our schools,” said Julie Krum, assistant director of maintenance for the district.

Currently, she said, the Los Angeles Unified School District is completing 801 management plans in compliance with the new law for submission, by deferral, in the beginning of next year. Most of them, Krum said, deal with removal of remaining asbestos materials in crawl spaces and boiler rooms where custodial people may be affected. The deadline for deferrals is May, 1989.

To date, the school district’s Asbestos Technical Unit (headed by Richard Henry) employed 41 trained asbestos surveyors to inspect the district’s schools and trained 85 to 90 of its employees, including a crew of 20 persons accredited for asbestos abatement.

Krum is not surprised that a large number of school districts have failed to meet the requirements as the deadline passes for the asbestos action. “There are three major obstacles for smaller school districts: lack of funding, the insufficiency of accredited Environmental Protection Agency people when the law first went into effect last December, as well as the lack of resources in most of those districts.”

Districts Band Together

On the other hand, the Downey School District, with only 20 school sites, has completed inspection for asbestos on those sites and its management plan will reflect very little work to be done, though funding to implement the necessary asbestos removal could be a problem.

Krum is sympathetic, suggesting that smaller schools districts follow the example set by smaller school districts in Los Angeles County. “Their solution was to band together and hire one experienced asbestos abatement company to inspect the schools and provide the management plans.”