Don’t Complete the Belmont Learning Complex

The Los Angeles School Board will soon decide whether or not to accept the recommendation of its Belmont Independent Commission to complete construction of the Belmont Learning Complex. Board members should reject the recommendation, which is profoundly wrong. Commissioners differed sharply on whether the new high school, sited on an old oil field and threatened by potentially explosive methane gas and toxic hydrogen sulfide, can be made safe. Yet, in arriving at its recommendation, the commission majority did not give sufficient weight to three critical factors.

* Can an estimated cost of $60.5 million for environmental mediation be justified? The majority argues that other, less complete mediation systems, with correspondingly lower cost estimates, were presented to the commission and rejected. In any event, the $60.5 million is merely an estimate.

But the California Department of Toxic Substance Control, which has a “hold” on the Belmont project, made it quite clear that only the most complete mediation system would be acceptable. Furthermore, arguing that the $60.5 million is merely an estimate is not reassuring. The actual cost is likely to be greater, since it seldom works the other way.

The proposed mediation system looks good--on paper. But the critical point is this: To accept any engineering solution to a potentially catastrophic occurrence would require the school board to buy into the idea of a 50-year-or-more flawless safety record. Think, “O-ring.” Now think, NASA vs. Los Angeles Unified School District.

The commission majority argues that the probability of a catastrophic incident at Belmont is low. The majority is disingenuous. The “probability” of a disaster is always low; it is the possibility of such, and the consequences thereof, that should inform our actions.

The possibility of a catastrophic event at the Belmont site sometime during the next 50-75 years is not a figment of anyone’s imagination. It is quite real and should not be dismissed so cavalierly.

Furthermore, news reports that there may be similar environmental problems at other, older schools sited on the same oil field should not be used to rationalize a lowest-common-denominator standard for future policy.

* The commission majority concedes that mandatory regulatory reviews will delay completion of Belmont by at least four to five years. Such delays would seem sufficient to warrant abandonment of the project. But that estimate is unrealistically low in that it assumes that there will be no court challenges, at any stage, to the adequacy of the regulatory process. It belabors the obvious to point out that this is not a realistic assumption. Court challenges could easily add two to three years to the majority’s estimated delay, perhaps more.

No alternative site would result in a comparable delay, assuming that the sordid history of Belmont, of evading both the letter and spirit of environmental laws, is not repeated.

The entire commission was moved by reports of overcrowded conditions at the existing Belmont High School. But given the above delays, the majority’s support for the Belmont Learning Complex as a solution is a false promise that serves only to get past a difficult moment by putting off the day of reckoning.

The compelling and emotional hue and cry of those who have been cynically misled and who are understandably bitterly disappointed must not be the basis for the school board’s decision. The families in the Belmont attendance area who have been misled are not well-served by yet another promise that, although well-intentioned, is no less false.

* Given the necessity of constructing 100 new schools in the district over the next decade, the school board cannot afford to be consumed for the better part of those 10 years trying to make right a project that, virtually every objective observer agrees, was a monumental mistake from the very beginning.

The clock has struck 12 on Belmont. If the school board allows it to dominate, as it surely will, its time, energy and focus for the next decade, the clock will likely strike 12 on its reform agenda as well.

At the end of the day, the hard truth is, there is no rational basis for proceeding further with this star-crossed project. *