EPA fines six Arizona school districts for asbestos violations

BEMA Network Members:  These types of violations should never have occurred with the confines of the U.S. within any state. Federal guidelines for asbestos contamination and removal may be affecting schools, public meeting locations, and other facilities in your communities. Zero tolerance for public safety.  Not only should the school districts be fined, but State public safety and & health agencies must be held accountable to absorb these fines and recovery effort for the community, with no reduction in school services for the education of our children. Charles D. Sharp Chief Executive Black Emergency Managers Association. For Immediate Release: Feb 19, 2013 Contact:  Rusty Harris-Bishop, 415-972-3140, harris-bishop.rusty@epa.gov                                                                                          EPA fines six Arizona school districts for asbestos violations More than 15,000 students to be protected by additional inspections, asbestos plans                                                                                                                     SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has fined six Arizona school districts a combined total of $94,575 for Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) violations. More than 15,000 children attend the 25 schools not in compliance with the federal AHERA in these districts. During inspections conducted in 2011, EPA inspectors discovered numerous violations, from failing to inspect facilities for asbestos containing materials, failing to re-inspect campuses with known asbestos containing materials, and failing to have an Asbestos Management Plan. All of the school districts have since taken necessary actions to comply with the law, with the cost of compliance reducing the penalties in most cases to zero. “Asbestos in schools has the potential to harm the health of students, teachers, and maintenance workers,” said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “EPA takes these violations seriously, and we are satisfied the schools have now conducted inspections and put their asbestos plans in place.” Each school district is allowed to subtract properly documented costs of complying with the regulations from the penalty amount. The six school districts are:   Apache Junction Unified School District (Pinal County): fined $21,675, but this was reduced to $7,933 because of the school district’s       Florence Unified School District (Pinal County): fined $31,705, but no cash payment was due because the documented costs of compliance exceeded the penalty.  St. John’s Unified School District (Apache County): fined $14,195, reduced to $824 by the school district’s cost of achieving compliance. Vernon Elementary School District (Apache County): fined $2,700, but no cash payment was due because the documented costs of compliance exceeded the penalty.  McNary Elementary School District (Fort Apache Indian Reservation): fined $14,200, but no cash payment was due because the documented costs of compliance exceeded the penalty. Round Valley Unified School District (Apache County): fined $10,100, but no cash payment was due because the documented costs of compliance exceeded the penalty. Federal law requires schools to conduct an initial inspection using accredited inspectors to determine if asbestos-containing building material is present and develop a management plan to address the asbestos materials found in the school buildings. Schools are also required to appoint a designated person who is trained to oversee asbestos activities and ensure compliance with federal regulations. Finally, schools must conduct periodic surveillance and re-inspections of asbestos-containing building material, properly train the maintenance and custodial staff, and maintain records in the management plan. Local education agencies must keep an updated copy of the management plan in its administrative office and at the school which must be made available for inspection by parents, teachers, and the general public. For more information about federal asbestos regulations visit: http://www.epa.gov/asbestos/lawsregs.html

SAMHSA's Blog Update: Reaching Youth with Prevention Messaging

		Reaching Youth with Prevention Messaging 02/14/2013 05:27 PM EST By Frances M. Harding, Director, SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention According to a recent report from SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health (http://www.samhsa.gov/data/2k13/NSDUH099b/sr099b-trends-prevention-messages.htm), between the early 2000s and 2011, fewer adolescents were exposed to drug or alcohol use prevention messages in the past year through media and school sources.  In fact, in 2011, 25 percent of adolescents did not receive prevention messages through media or school sources and 40 percent of adolescents did not talk with their parents about the dangers of substance use. Adolescents are subjected to influences ... Parenting is Prevention 02/14/2013 05:23 PM EST By Frances M. Harding, Director, SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention A youth’s perception of risks associated with substance use is an important determinant of whether he or she engages in substance use. A recent SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health report (http://www.samhsa.gov/data/2k13/NSDUH099a/sr099a-risk-perception-trends.pdf) surfaced several important perceptions among adolescents aged 12 to 17. Binge drinking can be categorized as having five or more alcoholic drinks once or twice a week. The good news is that the percentage of adolescents who perceived great risk from binge alcohol use has increased from 38.2 ..

Washington Post. 600 homeless children in D.C., and no one seems to care

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/600-homeless-children-in-dc-and-no-one-seems-to-care/2013/02/08/a728a0ea-722b-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_story.html

By Petula Dvorak, Published: February 8

I don’t care what we call our football team. I don’t care about Lance Armstrong’s doping or RGIII’s knee, or whether Notre Dame linebackerManti Te’o knew his dead girlfriend never existed in the first place, or any of the other sports dramas we’ve spent gobs of energy on in these past few weeks.

Here’s what we ought to be talking about: 600 kids. The District has set a dubious new record for the number of homeless kids crammed inside a scary, abandoned hospital that serves as the city’s makeshift family homeless shelter.

There are about 600, according to a nightly census done by the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness.

Stop and think about that. Six hundred kids with chubby cheeks and Spider-Man sneakers and Dora hats are beginning their journey in life on an army cot in a cafeteria or an old hospital bed in a city shelter. And that’s an improvement from the time they spent sleeping in cars, bus shelters, Metro stations, apartment-house lobbies or on a different couch every night.

This, of course, is happening in the same city now rolling in a $417 million budget surplus and on track for a $240 million surplus in the coming year.

The last time anyone agonized about a capacity crowd at the D.C. General shelter, it was two years ago and there were about 200 kids there. Where have 400 more homeless kids come from, and who are these families?

There’s Alexia Sullivan, 23, who was a full-time student at Howard University until her life fell apart. She had a baby, and her tuition increased but her scholarships didn’t. She lost her apartment trying to keep up and has been in the shelter with her 1-year-old for two weeks.

And there’s Kevin Cruz, 29, who has been at D.C. General with his wife and baby since Thanksgiving. They’ve been homeless since July, when McDonald’s cut Cruz’s hours until he couldn’t afford his apartment and his wife’s part-time work at Wal-Mart didn’t provide benefits when she had their child.

They didn’t get an emergency cot until that magic number — 32 degrees — signaled the start of hypothermia season and a District law kicked in that mandates emergency shelter for anyone in the winter.

Or there’s another family, too embarrassed to let me use their names. They have a kid in college up in Maine and five younger ones at home — which is now a tiny room in the family shelter.

You think getting a spot at the shelter means a walk on Easy Street? A place for the lazy to get three hots and a cot on the government dime?

No way. This is the place of desperation.

The intake process at the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center on Rhode Island Avenue can make it feel harder to get a spot in the shelter than a seat on Air Force One.

The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, whose lawyers spend endless days and late nights wrangling beds for the city’s homeless, issued a report this week on the District’s handling of this growing crisis.

“Of course the root of the whole problem is the severe shortage of affordable housing for low-income families,” said legal clinic lawyer Marta Beresin, who wants “an emergency shelter system for families that you don’t need a lawyer to navigate.”

Sullivan said shelter officials wanted a list of everyone she’s lived with in the past three years before they’d let her and her baby in while it was snowing outside. So she gave them that and the intake counselors called those people — be they abusive boyfriends or angry landlords — “no less than 20 times.”

Sullivan was lucky. After all those calls, she was given an army cot in the old hospital cafeteria, partitioned off with temporary walls that don’t reach the ceilings, MASH unit style.

No, this is not a world full of innocents. The D.C. General shelter is a showcase of bad decisions, social ills and generations of defeat.

Outside I met Asia Brown, who at 19 has more children than I do. Her 5-year-old hasn’t been in school since she got to the shelter in January. She’s waiting for paperwork to let him

(Petula Dvorak/The Washington Post) - Elayshia Brown (left), 6 months, shares a stroller for warmth with another baby living in the District's shelter for homeless families on Friday. Elayshia's mother, Asia Brown, lost her apartment in January and wound up in the abandoned hospital, where a record of nearly 600 children are now being housed.

 go to a nearby school on Capitol Hill. She also has a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old, who was squeezed into a stroller, sharing warmth with another homeless 2-month-old under a pink-yellow-and-blue baby blanket. Babies having babies.

Brown wants to get her GED and go to college, she told me. I hope she can make it, but the odds are against her.

Who pays if she doesn’t succeed? The poor kids, and the taxpayers who will have to pick up the pieces of their broken lives.

It’s almost like some bizarre “Hunger Games” alternate reality. You go 17 blocks from the Capitol, from the spot where the world went haywire because Beyonce lip-synced the national anthem, and there are cold children playing on trash-strewn concrete, fathers who can’t find work and mothers who can’t find hope.

It’s like Cindy Adams’s vision of the “crapital” come to life, and all we want to do is celebrate all the nice new restaurants and condos downtown. And look! We have cool red bikes!

These children didn’t ask to be homeless. This city needs to take ownership of this problem, come together and figure out how we can help these 600 young souls. They are an asset far more precious than any sports franchise, whatever its name.

Follow me on Twitter at @petulad. To read previous columns, go to washingtopost.com/dvorak.