Pushing To Be Free
In School From PCBs

Upper West Side — PCBs are resilient; their legacy is permanency. Thirty years after their ban, these hardy chemical compounds persist in our lakes, our rivers, our bodies, and a broad diversity of animals and plants. In New York City, a growing number of parents and political leaders are trying to rid school buildings of the long-standing presence of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls.

Mounting concerns were set off last year by the Daily News, which publicized state-certified lab tests that showed high levels of PCBs in building caulking for six city public schools. Since this report, one parent has decided to sue the school system to compel PCB remediation, and several elected officials have advocated new legislation.

The impending lawsuit and proposed legislation will be highlights of a press conference Tuesday, June 23 by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. at Department of Education headquarters at Tweed Courthouse. Diaz plans to reiterate his support for concerned parents like Naomi Gonzalez, the parent who has decided to sue the DOE after unsuccessfully trying to remove her children from PS 178 in the northeast Bronx, a school where the Daily News tests found PCB levels that were 2,000 times the EPA limit. Federal law proscribes substances which contain PCB concentrations that are greater than 50 parts per million, stating that anything above this limit presents an “unreasonable risk of injury to human health.”

Diaz will also announce his support for the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public Schools Facilities Act. This legislation, which passed the House of Representatives last month, contains two provisions aimed at helping schools fund PCB cleanup. The legislation proposes the use of federal low-interest loans and grants to cover a certain percentage of PCB cleanup fees, which can be expensive. The Act’s PCB-related provisions were drafted by U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley, whose district includes parts of the Bronx and Queens, and his fellow Bronx Congressman Jose E. Serrano, both of whom represent many Bronx parents for whom PCBs in schools has become a concern.

Diaz will also express support for an amendment to state law that would mandate testing for PCBs in city schools. This amendment was introduced to the State Assembly last year by Manhattan Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, and has remained stalled there ever since.

Attendees of the borough president’s conference will include other politicians who have taken an active role in this issue, parents who send their children to schools where PCBs are a concern, and members of the New York Lawyers for Public Interest, the nonprofit firm that is representing Gonzalez.

Another topic of discussion will be why neither the DOE nor the federal Environmental Protection Agency is moving to conduct a citywide remediation of PCB-laden caulk – one of the most prevalent indoor sources of the contaminant. At the end of April, the DOE announced that it would decontaminate soil around 15 schools, but it expressed no intention to remove building caulking in the absence of renovations.