As evidence of PCB contamination at Malibu High School (MHS) is made public and the demands for safe and healthy schools for our students and teachers gets louder, the people who knew about the MHS contamination, who hid the MHS contamination and now refuse to test for contamination, are looking for a story. They want a story that points the finger and blames someone else for the fact that five years after PCBs were discovered at MHS, they are still there. They need to identify a bad guy who tied their hands, preventing the school district from taking any action to clean up the PCB toxins. And the enemy they selected for their story is the Malibu Community Alliance (MCA).
In 2009, PCBs were discovered on the MHS campus and not disclosed to the public. In August of 2010, the BB Advisory Committee voted to stop the immediate disclose of the PCB contamination to the public. In the summer of 2011, 50 truckloads of PCB contaminated dirt were secretly removed from the MHS campus with no notice to the public.Â
Independent testing of MHS classrooms found PCB concentrations 7,000 times higher than EPA health guidelines, yet the school district has refused to test to confirm or find the sources of this contamination. And, at the same time they were churning out press releases telling parents and students that MHS was safe, they were fencing off MHS grounds that were contaminated with PCBs. Now, if your resume looked like that, you’d be looking for someone else to blame, too.
When the PCBs were disclosed, MCA immediately contacted the California Coastal Commission (CCC) and the school district and told them that we would not stand in the way of efforts to remediate the toxins.
Jack Ainsworth, Deputy Director of the California Coastal Commission, and Malibu Planning Director Joyce Bozylinski have publicly stated the MCA lighting appeal at the CCC does not prevent the district from testing and remediating the PCB contamination at the school.
One last point: the people attempting to manipulate the contamination issue today are the same people who lied to the Malibu Park residents when they installed the stadium lighting at MHS. We understand what you are going through. We have been there.
Steve Uhring