Compton School Building Next to Tainted Site Closed

Compton school officials have closed a building and transferred students to portable classrooms on a middle school campus where tests revealed the presence of dangerous chemical contaminants in the air and soil.

The school officials said they took the actions even though they have been assured by consultants that the contaminants at the Vanguard Learning Center posed no danger to the school’s 780 students and 60 staff members.

“We are taking no chances,” said Randolph E. Ward, the state administrator who oversees the Compton Unified School District.

The district was informed of the potential hazard late last year by Alcoa, which found evidence of soil contamination while working to remove an old waste storage tank on a 13-acre industrial site it once owned next to the school property.

Alcoa, which says it is only partially responsible for the cleanup, was required by the South Coast Air Quality Management District to notify the school and neighbors of its plan to treat the chemical contamination by extracting harmful chemical vapors from the ground.

School officials launched their own investigation over the Christmas holidays, hiring a team of engineers, geologists and health professionals from LFR Levine-Fricke, an environmental consulting firm, to determine if the contamination had spread.

The consultants found evidence that it had. Their tests found traces of cleaning solvent beneath the soil along the western boundary of the school, next to the former Alcoa property. Investigators also found that air in the classrooms contained traces of the same chemicals contaminating the soil.

Ward said the highest concentrations of airborne chemicals were found in the school’s poorly ventilated Building D, which includes two physical education classrooms.

“While the test results suggest there is no immediate health risk,” he wrote parents in a Jan. 14 letter, “the presence and the levels of these chemicals are sufficient warning for us to temporarily prohibit use of those classrooms in that building.”

Students displaced by the closure are being housed in temporary bungalows that were moved on the school grounds. School officials have also prohibited children from playing on the playground closest to the property line where they believe the contaminants originate.

Ward said the district will monitor Alcoa’s activities to assure that “all requirements for safety meet or exceed statutory standards.”

Alcoa spokesman David Neurohr said his company is committed to the cleanup.

“The task at hand is to conduct a responsible cleanup that will safeguard the environment and the surrounding populations,” he said.

The site once belonged to Weslock Corp., a lock and doorknob company. Alcoa purchased the company in 1986, but sold it within two years. Weslock had a series of owners before it went out of business in the 1990s. The property is now occupied by a clothing manufacturer.

Among the chemicals found contaminating the property, officials found evidence of perchloroethylene, also known as PCE, a cleaning solvent used in metal drying and degreasing that has been linked to cancer.

The district’s consultants found evidence of PCE in classrooms. Alcoa shared the findings with a health team from Yale University, which concluded that the levels weren’t high enough to represent a threat.

In its report, the Yale group found the indoor air samples of the school were “considered harmless and would not pose any significant health risk to the occupants.”

But district officials question the group’s conclusions.

“The levels may not be dangerous, but they are not normal,” said district spokesman Fausto Capobianco. “We consider that a threat to the safety of our children, and we are going to take whatever action we can to correct the situation.”

Meanwhile, parents and faculty members at the Vanguard Learning Center appeared less apprehensive.

“Whatever needs to be done will be done,” said Bettye McTier, an eighth-grade physical science teacher and the school’s teachers union representative.

Principal Deloris D. Holmes shared her the confidence.

“We are just going about our business,” she said. “The district has been keeping everybody informed about the status of the situation and that has gone a long way toward easing our concerns.”

Parents also seemed to be taking the news in stride.

“I’m not too concerned,” said Antonio White, the school’s Parent Teacher Assn. president, and the father of two daughters at the school.