As toxic chemicals spewed from light fixtures at Upper West Side schools over the past couple of years, the city Department of Education essentially told parents that they’d deal with it, eventually. The chemicals, called PCBs, were used in light fixtures until the 1970’s, but they have been shown to cause cancer in animals and probably in humans. This is a particularly big issue on the UWS: after PCBs leaked out of a fixture at PS 87 this year, the Department of Education didn’t tell parents about it for months.
The city had said the schools would be PCB-free in 10 years. But parents were not willing to wait a decade for the chemicals to be removed, and took the city to court.
On Tuesday, parents won a battle to make the city speed up the removal. In court-ordered mediation, the city agreed to remove the PCB-light fixtures by 2016, instead of their original timeline of 2021.
“Today, New York City public school students and their families can finally breathe a sigh of relief after the New York City Department of Education (DOE) was forced to agree to abandon its reckless 10-year PCB remediation timeline. For years, I have battled, along with parents, teachers, advocates and community members to force the DOE act responsibly and in the best interests of the health and safety of our children by removing a carcinogen and known neurotoxin from our kid’s schools. After foolishly defending this law suit, the DOE has been forced to see the light.”
The city claims they were planing to do this all along:
“Since the beginning of this proposed plan, I have always said that we would reassess the timeline once we had a better understanding of the work,” said Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott in a statement.
Did you notice in the NY Times article today that the cost of this project is 1 billion dollars and I figure that by the time it’s done it will be considerably more. That’s well more than 1 million dollars per school!!!!! Can you imagine the politicians that have their hands in the cookie jar on this one. We are doomed. Why can’t anyone just do something because it’s the right thing to do, the humanitarian thing to do.
Re: Assemblyperson Rosenthal’s “public school students and their families can finally breathe a sigh of relief”
oh sure, but just don’t try breathing that sigh in a classroom with PCB-leaking light fixtures that the D.o.E. thinks are not that important an issue to remediate.
Re: Chancellor “How-Did-I-Get-Here-Oh-Cause-They-Didn’t-Want-Kathy-Black” Walcott’s “I have always said that we would reassess the timeline once we had a better understanding of the work”
Hmmm…isn’t “REASSESS” a most appropriate word for the D.o.E., especially the THIRD, FOURTH, FIFTH, SIXTH, AND SEVENTH LETTERS OF THAT WORD!
Retired (thankfully)31-year-veteran teacher
A billion is about $143 per person in a city of seven million people. The asbestos scare resulted in World Trade Tower redesign during construction do the tops didn’t have any. That the DDT scare has murdererd millions is a fact so clear that denial properly describes the state of the Greenpeeace crowd. This issue though, doesn’t hit me in the same BS detector way, but I’ll note that that fluorescent lighting inherently contains real amounts of liquid mercury. Had greens not scuttled the Atomic Age too there would be no high emissions era global warming “debate” (watch out for the IRS, skeptics!) and no need for dehumanizing literally green light output poison lamps in our offices, schools and now homes. That objectively clean (minus profitable activist scares) and low emissions fracking is similarly subjected to the same neurotic drum beat, minus any Economics 101 concept of statistical murder, well human folly knows no limits in our growing dictatorship, a word I have never used to describe it until governor Cuomo got his way with shredding our Constitution, calling for the biggest election fraud in US history, publicly, cheered on by the now notorious Upper West Side, a literal multi-agency attack on the personal lives of political organizers. But I digress. Or do I?
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in carbon chemistry (Columbia)
Note how when we need money to teach, its not available. Thank God that when its a heath issue..the money is gotten….just sayin’