Debris from L.A. Riots Is Put to Good Use : Environment: Multiethnic coalition overseeing demolition recycles 80% of the rubble, generates jobs.

A local business partnership is doing what it considers the environmentally and politically correct thing in cleaning up riot-torn Los Angeles: It’s recycling the rubble with the help of workers who were unemployed.

The city awarded a $23-million contract to Los Angeles Community Partnership in June to oversee the demolition of about 500 buildings that were deemed hazards after they were destroyed or damaged by fires, said Partnership Chairman George Pla. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is reimbursing the city for the cost of the contract, he said.

The partnership is a consortium of five engineering and construction companies, four of them minority-owned. It received the job after minority contractors complained they were being excluded from the rebuilding process.

The partnership includes two Latino firms, Cordoba Corp. and Pacifica Services; a Korean-owned firm, JakKim Engineers; a black-owned company, Construction Control Services; and Daniel Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall, which is Anglo-owned.

So far, the partnership has awarded more than 250 demolition and cleanup contracts worth $4.3 million, Pla said, with local minority firms receiving about 90% of the work. Of the 300 jobs created, 132 went to people who had been unemployed.

“What they’re doing is a good thing,” said Nick Sandoval, president of the Hispanic Contractors Assn., one of the groups that has advocated hiring more minorities for the cleanup.

Since late July, crews have removed about 55,000 cubic yards of rubble--enough to fill 100, 1,500-square-foot three-bedroom homes. The material has been removed citywide, Pla said.

“That’s a helluva lot of stuff,” said Art Anagnostou, the partnership’s director of recycling and disposal.

He said nearly 80% of the debris has been recycled, saving about $1 million that would have gone to landfill fees. Of the four recycling companies doing the work, Anagnostou said, one is owned by a Latino, one by an African-American, one by an American Indian and the other by a woman.

The recycled rubble has included everything from bricks to water heaters.

Bricks that are in one piece are sold to wholesalers. Broken ones are sold along with chunks of asphalt and concrete to companies that grind the material for use in constructing roads. Metal objects are stripped down and sold to scrap metal dealers, said Sam Perdomo, owner of Perdomo & Sons, a City Terrace firm that is one of the four companies handling the recycling.

When the partnership announced it would be taking applications for the demolition work, nearly 1,200 people--from architects to high school dropouts--applied for the jobs, said training coordinator Richard Seraile.

Of the 132 who received jobs as laborers, about 80% are African-Americans. One worker is Korean and the rest are Latinos, Seraile said. The other 168 workers were already employed by the firms working on the cleanup.

Bobby Brown, 48, a computer technician, said the job has allowed him to save money to attend a local vocational school, where he hopes to upgrade his computer skills and transfer to UCLA.

For Levell Patton, 40, unemployed since 1987, the job has meant that he can finally provide for his wife and their 10-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.

“It made me feel inadequate not being able to give them the things they needed . . . I used to go home with my head down,” Patton said. “But now it’s a whole new world, thanks to the (Los Angeles Community Partnership).”