School Districts Tackle Hidden Danger--Asbestos : Renovation: Campuses throughout the county face the costly, yet necessary, task of removing the cancer-causing material.

In a year of tight school budgets, several Ventura County school districts are grappling with yet another costly problem: asbestos removal.

During renovations this summer, several districts must remove asbestos that would be disturbed by the changes. Also, asbestos has been discovered in new areas.

In older schools, the added expense of asbestos removal “is very much a reality when you’re doing remodeling work,” said Mary Beth Wolford, assistant superintendent of business and property management for the Simi Valley Unified School District.

Asbestos, a fiber that was widely used in building construction as insulation and as a fire-retardant before the 1970s, is a known cancer-causing material that has been linked to asbestosis and lung cancer.

Simi Valley is renovating ventilation systems at seven of its schools over the summer and, as part of the project, is doing a survey to look for other areas that might contain asbestos.

So far, about 7,500 square feet of asbestos-laden ceiling tile, which will cost an estimated $30,000 to remove, has been discovered at Valley View Junior High School. The tile is mostly in the school’s administration building and in a multipurpose room, district officials said.

During an ongoing renovation project at historic Santa Paula Union High, construction workers unexpectedly found several thousand feet of unused steam pipe lined with asbestos-covered material.

On July 10, the Santa Paula school board held a special meeting to authorize spending nearly $48,000 to remove the asbestos. Specially trained workers, certified by the Environmental Protection Agency, began removing the material July 8.

The Rio Elementary School District has spent about $15,000 on asbestos removal during a project to remodel bathrooms and make them accessible to handicapped students at Rio Real, Rio Del Valle and Rio Plaza schools.

The Conejo Valley Unified School District is spending $7,000 to remove about 1,400 square feet of vinyl floor tile that contains asbestos and replace it with carpet at 30-year-old Ladera Elementary School in Thousand Oaks.

And in the Fillmore Unified School District, contractors were hired in the past year to remove asbestos material from San Cayetano and Piru elementary schools, Fillmore Junior High and Fillmore High School. The removal cost about $75,000, more than half of the district’s $120,000 budget for school maintenance and repairs.

“We just felt it was good to take these small amounts and just get rid of them” said Robert L. Kernen, assistant superintendent of business and personnel.

The only remaining school in Fillmore containing asbestos is Fillmore High, where the material is primarily in ceiling plaster in the arts building and insulation in the science building, Kernen said. But the material there is in forms acceptable under federal guidelines, he said. Removing all of it would cost about $250,000, he said.

Asbestos is most dangerous when friable, or brittle enough to be crumbled under hand pressure, because particles may become airborne when it is disturbed, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1982, the EPA required all schools to check for friable asbestos under the Asbestos in Schools Rule. In 1987, the even stricter Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act was passed, with guidelines for removing or containing asbestos.

Those guidelines require that school districts have asbestos management plans on file at each school, including inspection records and the location of any asbestos.

District officials also must notify parent, teacher and other employee organizations annually about their efforts to contain the asbestos.

Under the federal law, non-friable asbestos material in schools must be monitored every six months by trained school personnel and reinspected every three years by an EPA-accredited inspector.

Officials at several Ventura County school districts said their three-year inspections must be made in the coming school year.

The county superintendent of schools office is contacting districts interested in joining together to bid for an inspection contractor, said Stephen Kingsford, assistant superintendent of administrative services.

Although schools are required under federal law to know and make available to the public information on where asbestos-containing material is, unexpected problems often arise during renovation.

Stephen Pedersen, an architect overseeing the renovation at Santa Paula Union High, said workers removed about 3,000 feet of pipe wrapped in asbestos material before the project started last December.

But earlier this month, construction workers discovered another 3,000 feet of abandoned steam pipes wrapped with an asbestos material that emitted dust when touched. The pipes were mostly in crawl spaces throughout the school attic, Pedersen said.

“It’s being removed entirely,” Pedersen said. The attic area where the removal work started this week has been sealed off while renovation continues in other areas of the school, he said.

The Ventura Unified School District has spent about $60,000 in the past two years to remove asbestos from heating systems and from pipes and ducts, said maintenance Director Gary Mortimer. The district also has a full-time employee who monitors compliance with federal laws on asbestos removal and oversees other safety issues, Mortimer said.

Teachers at Ventura’s Buena High School became concerned about asbestos last year when many saw maintenance workers wearing protective outer gear while cleaning heating equipment and painting walls.

Mortimer said the workers were not required to wear the gear but had donned it as part of a training exercise to practice asbestos removal techniques.

However, seeing the workers in the protective gear “created some alarm” among teachers, said John Gennaro, president of the Ventura Unified Education Assn. The union asked that the district pay to screen teachers for lung disease.

Teachers and district officials did not reach an agreement last school year on who would pay for such tests, but the issue is likely to be brought up again during the upcoming school year, Gennaro said.