The funding loss has outraged residents and angered Assembly members who worked to obtain funding for the six-year effort.
As congressional representatives urge federal officials to assist California’s struggling, $750-million effort to remove brain-damaging lead from neighborhoods surrounding the shuttered Exide battery recycling plant, The Times has learned that the agency in charge of the project has forfeited millions of dollars earmarked for the cleanup of heavily contaminated parkways.
“We believe the severity of the crisis, the failure of past remediation efforts to create healthy communities, and the risk to public health requires assistance from the EPA and the resources available under the Superfund program,” the lawmakers wrote. The analysis found that 76% of the samples contained lead concentrations in excess of the state health threshold. The Department of Toxic Substances Control estimated that it would cost $70 million to clean parkways within the remediation zone, according to Wescott.
However, environmental advocates and residents worry that if a federal agency oversees aspects of the cleanup, it could opt to remove soil with lead contamination above the federal standard, which is five times higher than California’s limit. On Olympic Boulevard in Boyle Heights, a 1,700-feet stretch between Camulos Street and Grand Vista Avenue, a number of parkways border Lou Costello Jr. Recreation Center and Wyvernwood Garden Apartments. State-ordered testing found 12 soil samples from parkways in that stretch with lead levels above 1,000 parts per million. The highest, 2,460 parts per million, was collected from a grassy strip of land mere feet from bleachers and a baseball diamond.
Her comments were echoed by Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo , who advocated for state funding to test and clean parkways near the Exide plant.
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