Oxnard Forced to Deal With Belmont Fallout

Faced with nearly $125,000 in bills for environmental testing, the cash-strapped Oxnard Union High School District has become one of the first to suffer the fallout of the Belmont Learning Complex controversy in Los Angeles.

“We were the guinea pigs,” said Lou Cunningham, Oxnard’s director of facilities. “And other districts are going to face worse than we had to face. It’s going to be a nightmare.”

The district had to prove the environmental safety of the site for its sixth campus, which is much needed to relieve crowding of the district’s 14,358 students.

The tests were required because Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation in the wake of Belmont that changed the rules on how districts get approval to build new schools. Though the law doesn’t officially take effect until January, the state Department of Education put it into practice in June.

Under the policy, California educators won’t give districts the go-ahead to start construction until the state Department of Toxic Substances Control approves the school site. Often, that means more tests, more money and more time.

Outside of Los Angeles, Oxnard was one of three districts--with Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified and Anaheim City, both in Orange County--to face the new policy. Now, state health officials are reviewing the environmental safety of dozens of sites throughout California.

Oxnard officials thought they had jumped through all the required hoops to ensure the environmental safety of their newest campus, Pacifico High School. They had sampled the soil, tested for pesticide residue and reviewed records. And in early summer, the district was gearing up to start construction.

But then the problems at the Belmont Learning Complex surfaced. State education officials told Cunningham he had to provide more data proving the site’s environmental safety.

Years before, environmental studies had shown that there were residuals of DDT and other pesticides in the soil, and health officials feared the long-term impact of those residuals on students and teachers.

So Cunningham called ENSR, a Camarillo-based environmental consulting firm, which gathered about 100 additional samples and conducted more than 300 lab tests. And because the Oxnard school district was facing a time crunch to start construction, ENSR did two months’ worth of work in about two weeks.

“All the red flags went up because of Belmont,” said Gerald Hels, senior environmental engineer at ENSR. “They had to put everything on hold until they got the environmental concerns taken care of.”

The additional tests proved that the site was safe, and the California Department of Education authorized construction on July 2.

“School sites, once we approve them, can exist for centuries,” said George Shaw, a consultant with the state Department of Education. “So it’s very important that we ensure that the school site meets the highest standards for safety.”

Salvador Godoy, director of facilities for the Rio Elementary School District, agrees, but is concerned about the cost to his tiny district on the edge of Oxnard.

The 3,100-student district is trying to build a sixth elementary school on agricultural land. Officials have already had to spend about $100,000 more than expected on additional tests. And if the latest round of samples doesn’t come up clean, the district could spend up to $500,000 removing soil.

“It hurts in our pocketbooks,” said Godoy. “We are not going to be able to build classrooms to accommodate for our growth.”

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Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles) and state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) proposed the legislation after Los Angeles Unified officials allowed construction on the Belmont Learning Complex to begin without completing a thorough environmental assessment of the site, a former oil field contaminated with methane and other oil byproducts.

“In light of Belmont, most school districts are crossing their Ts and dotting their I’s,” said Sean Corrigan, director of planning and facilities for Conejo Valley Unified School District.

Districts have long been required to conduct “Phase 1” environmental assessments, which include a review of the past uses of the property and of the impact of nearby businesses.

In the past, district officials sent that assessment to the Department of Education for approval. But now it goes to the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which often requires a more comprehensive review, including soil samples and thorough records research.

That can cost from $30,000 to $100,000 and take between two and six months, according to department officials. If the department requires any cleanup, districts could spend as much as $500,000 in unanticipated costs.

“Although it may be a little extra work on the part of the school district, it provides the assurance and the confidence that the school is in fact safe and not affected by hazardous substances,” said Peter Garcia, chief of the department’s school investigation unit, which has only existed for six months.

Stella Doiron, director of facilities for Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified, compared the policy change to a baseball game. “It’s like you are in the ninth inning and are winning, and all of the sudden, the rules of the game change,” she said.

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Four months after submitting an environmental review on a potential elementary school site, the Orange County district is still waiting to hear back from the Department of Toxic Substances Control. The district cannot even buy the land until the department says it’s free from toxic contamination.

“It’s putting districts in a very tough position,” Doiron said. “We are getting caught in the middle because of an overreaction.”

Educators such as Doiron worry about the effects of the new law. In addition to the added costs, the new requirements could slow construction of new schools at a time when districts are bursting at the seams because of enrollment growth, and are eagerly awaiting Proposition 1A funds.

The new policy could also inhibit land purchases by tying up landowners for months while additional samples are taken and lab tests are conducted. And it will affect districts in both urban areas--where schools are being built on former industrial sites--and rural areas, where schools are being built on farmland.

Already the Rio elementary district’s project has been delayed four months, and Godoy expects the school will open a year late. Godoy said he is lobbying legislators to get the policy adjusted to be more realistic, so small districts don’t have to bear the brunt of Belmont.

“What happened has created a hysteria,” Godoy said. “We still want to end up with a school site that is safe for children, but at what cost?”