September 13, 1994THE CLOUDS OF DUST, NOT JOY
NABES FIGHT BLAST CLEANING
September 13, 1994THE CLOUDS OF DUST, NOT JOY
NABES FIGHT BLAST CLEANING
By Jonathan Dube
MANFRED HECHT and Cari Comart saw clouds of dust and debris settling in their
yard two years ago, as workers 200 feet away sandblasted lead paint off the
Williamsburg Bridge.
The couple shut the doors and windows of their house in Williamsburg, but
tests taken after the blasting found that lead levels in their 18-month-old
daughter Bettina's blood had more than doubled. Tests showed the toxic level
of lead in their yard to be 45 times federal safety levels.
In response to Hecht, Comart and dozens of other area residents, the city was
forced to stop all abrasive blasting that summer. But now city officials are
about to resume blast cleaning, and community groups have mobilized citywide to
stop them.
The city plans to begin abrasive blasting on the Pulaski Bridge around the
end of this month, following a new set of procedures for containing sandblasting
debris, according to Fred Pascopella, the director of the Department of
Transportation's Bureau of Bridges.
To block this, dozens of community groups, public officials and concerned
individuals like Hecht and Comart have joined in a lawsuit against the city,
asking for the procedures to be declared unsatisfactory and for the removal of
any lead-paint by abrasive blasting to be prohibited.
"The whole ordeal has been very scary," said Hecht, whose daughter has not
suffered any complications from the lead. "Our primary concern here is to stop
them from doing any more damage."
Nearly 100 children living in the vicinity of the Williamsburg Bridge showed
increased lead levels in tests taken after the abrasive blasting, according to
previously unreleased Department of Health data contained in the lawsuit papers.
Out of 712 area children under six years tested in the two months after
abrasive blasting ceased, 95 of them had lead levels above 10 micrograms of lead
per deciliter of blood, and seven had levels above 20, according to the lawsuit.
Federal standards say blood lead levels should be below 10 micrograms. Hecht and
Comart's daughter Bettina's lead levels have not reached that point.
In the area near the bridge, the highest lead level found in 1992 was 46,092
parts per million, in a playground just south of the Williamsburg Bridge. Lead
levels exceeding 500 to 1,000 parts per million are considered dangerous by the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lead interferes with the
production of red blood cells and may damage the brain, kidneys, liver, and
other organs, according to the CDC.
Health activists have also complained about high levels of lead contamination
in the areas around the Bronx-Whitestone, Brooklyn, George Washington, Henry
Hudson, Manhattan, Queensboro, Throgs Neck and Triborough Bridges. Abrasive
blasting on some of these bridges was done by the Port Authority and the
Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.
The DOT's new procedures require contractors to do all abrasive blasting
inside a containment system consisting of fans, suction machines, large hoses,
filters and protective casings to seal in the debris, Pascopella said.
The procedures quintuple the cost of abrasive blasting. A contract for
blast-cleaning and painting half of the Manhattan Bridge, for example, has
increased from $ 10 million to $ 50 million. And because funds are limited, that
means that the DOT will now be forced to cut back its work by about five times,
said Richard Brink, a DOT capital coordinator.
While community groups agree the new procedures are an improvement, they say
in the suit that they fear the rules may not be followed.
"The monitoring of these procedures is being thrown completely into the
contractors' hands, which is suicide," Hecht said. "We want to make sure there
are effective checks and balances in place."
But Renee Hill, an attorney for the city, said the monitoring will be
adequate. "There will be city inspectors from DOT on the sites of certain jobs
to ensure that the containment procedurEs are properly followed," she said.
The community groups suing the city include the Williamsburg Around the Block
Association, Brooklyn Community Board 1, El Puente, United Jewish Organizations,
Community Alliance for the Environment, Lower East Side Joint Planning Council,
South Bronx Clean Air Coalition and New York City Coalition to End Lead
Poisoning.
The lawsuit also charges that in developing the procedures without issuing an
environmental impact statement, the city violated several city and state laws.
"It seems pretty clear to us that when you're doing lead-paint removal all
over the city, it may have an impact on the environment," said Jim Freeman, an
attorney for the plaintiffs who works with Bronx Legal Service Center for
Constitutional Rights.
But Elizabeth St. Claire of the city's law department said there is an
exemption in the statutes for routine maintenance work.
The suit also charges that the city failed to get enough community input when
developing the procedures. The procedures were developed by Department of
Transportation officials, in consultation with a mayoral task force composed of
officials from several city agencies and three community residents.
St. Claire called it a "very open, public process." But Hecht, who was on the
task force, said, "We don't know if what we came up with at the table is safe.
We [the community members] didn't have the expertise."
That is for a judge to decide. Meanwhile, as residents wait for the judge to
set a hearing date, the city is preparing to resume sandblasting.
Staff Writer
