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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:
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
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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.”
