Parents and community leaders have won a victory in a long-running debate over environmental hazards in the Mott Haven school campus at Concourse Village near E. 153 Street.
The court ordered the School Construction Authority to conduct a new environmental review of plans to monitor the four new schools in the Mott Haven school campus to insure that toxic chemicals covered up in building the schools and its athletic field will not poison future generations of students. Those plans must be open to public scrutiny.
In the July 7 decision, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court sided unanimously with a lower court’s 2008 decision that found the city had violated state environmental law by building the Mott Haven complex without including the long-term monitoring plan in its environmental impact statement.
The schools were built on a former rail yard, contaminated with mercury, lead, benzene and tetrachloroethylene, a chemical used to clean metal. Former industrial sites are called “brownfields,” and are cleaned up under a state program, so the city contended that it had followed state guidelines.
A group of parents and local residents comprising the Bronx Committee for Toxic Free Schools filed the lawsuit against the city in 2007 to stop construction of the complex. They argued the cleanup should have been more carefully evaluated. Later that year the City Council unanimously approved the plan to build, but on the condition that a more thorough evaluation be conducted.
While they failed to stop the schools from being built, they hailed the court ruling for establishing a precedent that the city will have to follow in the future.
We are thrilled by this decision,” said Jane Maisel, a public school teacher and member of the committee for toxic free schools, in a statement released by New York Lawyers For The Public Interest, which brought the suit along with the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
The Department of Education simply cannot approve a contaminated school site without a comprehensive plan to protect children from the contamination,” Maisel continued.
But although parents may be elated that the courts have ruled in their favor for the second time in three years, the city may still decide to appeal the ruling to the state’s highest court.
In an emailed statement, Carrie Noteboom, senior counsel for the city’s law department, said the city will go ahead with the court’s recommendations.
The School Construction Authority “has already completed a thorough cleanup and implemented a state approved monitoring plan,” Noteboom said. “The Court decided that this plan should undergo additional public review, and SCA is prepared to do that.”
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