Juan Gonzalez: Years Of Lies And Delays From Bloomberg Over PCB's In Schools Laid Bare This Week

The Children First mayor has been saying it will take 10 years to get the light fixtures with the PCB's in them out of the schools:

A fluorescent light suddenly exploded Tuesday morning in Room 316 at Intermediate School 123 in Harlem.

Fumes from the failed classroom fixture laden with toxic PCB fluid spread so quickly the entire school had to be temporarily evacuated. Nine pupils and two teachers were treated at a nearby hospital for asthma attacks and severe coughing.

“We had the same thing happen a month ago in Room 216, though it wasn’t as bad as this one,” Hope Scott, president of the school’s Parents Association, said.

Then late Thursday, Department of Education spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said: “Today a smell was emitted from a fixture on the second floor. It will be removed tonight and the room will be ventilated.”

These three incidents in just one Harlem school have finally laid bare years of lies and delays from the Bloomberg administration over the huge problem of PCB-laden lights in our public schools.

Just six weeks ago, a Brooklyn federal judge blasted the Department of Education for flouting the City Council, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and previous court orders that have urged faster action in removing PCB ballasts from public schools.

Until this week, the city kept insisting it needed 10 years to replace more than half a million lighting fixtures that contain the dangerous substance.

But in response to a lawsuit filed by New York Communities for Change challenging that 10-year plan, U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson labeled the city’s reasoning “spurious.”

Johnson’s decision virtually predicted the harrowing incidents at IS 123 and other schools .

Since the federal government banned the use of PCBs in 1979, any such fixtures in city schools are now more than 32 years old — twice their useful life.

“As they age, the failure rate . . . increases dramatically,” Johnson noted, and he ordered the city to stop “foot-dragging” and mediate a settlement with the plaintiffs.

Other leaders have offered concrete plans. City Controller John Liu has proposed a bond issue that would more than pay for itself through energy savings.

Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) has questioned why in some buildings a charter school’s lighting fixtures have been replaced but not those of the co-located public school.

Until this week, Mayor Bloomberg ignored everyone.

Then some students and teachers in Harlem ended up in the hospital. So Wednesday evening, only hours after Rosenthal called for a news conference outside IS 123, Bloomberg’s people suddenly announced the city is speeding up the removal of PCBs fixtures. But given their outrageous record on this issue, let’s see their plan.

These people in the Bloomberg administration are liars and criminals who do not care at all about the children in their care.

If they did, they would not send children to schools in these conditions.