Nolan and Gioia on toxic schools

See today's oped in the Daily News by Assembly member Cathy Nolan and City Council member Eric Gioia, responding to Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott piece last week --- in which Walcott defended the indefensible -- the opposition of this administration to requiring environmental and community review of toxic sites for leased schools. This is how the Nolan/Gioia oped starts:

“Deputy Mayor Walcott's "Be Our Guest" piece last week is a disingenuous public relations ploy to protect mayoral power and avoid accountability at the expense of the health of New York City's schoolchildren and teachers.”

The bill in the Legislature sponsored by Nolan would provide the most necessary basic rights of disclosure and City Council review for the SCA’s plans to lease buildings on contaminated sites:

“As a check and balance on mayoral control, communities must be given notice of plans to lease toxic sites for schools and the Council must be given the opportunity to vote on the appropriateness of a site.”

The administration’s dishonesty on this issue and their lack of concern about the health of our children matches their dishonesty on class size. For more info on this issue, see our previous posting here, about the contaminated Information Technology HS in Long Island City, and the New York Lawyers for Public Interest website here.

Yet another contaminated high school?

Fox News carried a very scary story last night, about the toxic contamination at the Information Technology HS in Long Island City -- and the lack of action by the DOE to do anything about it.

$20 million of our tax dollars went into converting a former metal-plating factory into this school– with the building still being leased from its owners at more than $1 million per year.

Through documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Fox News found out that the contraption built to vent the toxic fumes outside the school (see the white tent-like object at the right of the school in the photo above) is actually bringing more contamination inside – and consulting engineers on the project have advised officials to shut it off. Yet the Dept. of Environmental Conservation and the School Construction Authority refuse to address this issue.

The building also houses a school for special needs children.

As Dave Palmer of NY Lawyers for Public Interest writes,

"This disturbing report suggests what many of us have feared: that DOE and SCA are incapable of ensuring the safety of children, teachers and community residents when they choose to build schools on contaminated sites....This should not be allowed to happen."

The administration's chronic and apparently deliberate practice of siting schools on contaminated sites, with no public review or oversight, has been noted previously on the blog, here and here.

Hopefully, this will strengthen the position of Dave and other environmental advocates who who have been pressing for more community and City Council review of leased school sites.