State audit faults slow Exide cleanup
Removing lead from child- care centers, schools, parks is lagging, report says.
The cleanup of thousands of lead- contaminated homes, child- care centers, schools and parks surrounding the closed Exide battery recycling facility in Vernon is running behind schedule and over budget due to poor management by California regulators and has left children at continued risk of poisoning, according to a state audit released Tuesday.
The report by State Auditor Elaine Howle’s office criticized the California Department of Toxic Substances Control for delays, cost overruns, contracting problems and other shortcomings in its effort to remove lead contamination from properties across half a dozen communities in southeast L. A. County. The audit estimated the cleanup is likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than the state has set aside.
Among the most troubling f indings, according to the auditor’s office, was Toxic Substances Control’s failure to remove leadtainted soil from most of the 50 properties, including child- care centers, schools and parks, that it identified in the early stages of the cleanup as posing a particularly high risk to children.
“Despite the risk these properties present, DTSC has yet to clean 31 of them,” the audit said. “In fact, it has cleaned only one of these properties since May 2018.”
At its current pace, the department’s cleanup of the 3,200 worst- contaminated properties will not be f inished “until more than one year after the expected completion date” in June 2021, the audit found.
Cleaning all 7,800 contaminated properties in the zone stretching 1.7 miles from the plant could cost some $ 650 million, the state auditor estimated.
California lawmakers have allocated more than $ 250 million for the cleanup of the most heavily contaminated properties, but Toxic Substances Control will exhaust that funding with 269 of those properties uncleaned, the audit found, and the department has no timeline to clean the other 4,600 properties that will remain contaminated.
Assemblyman Miguel Santiago ( D- Los Angeles), who requested the audit, said “it is unacceptable that the department will run out of money that the state gave them” and demanded “DTSC f ix their mistakes and create a realistic plan to clean up every single contaminated property.”
Agency Director Meredith Williams said the department will implement all of the auditor’s recommendations. She acknowledged that “it did take us a while to come up to speed,” but said the department is now cleaning about 20 properties a month. “We are efficient. We control costs carefully. We learned every step of the way on this cleanup.”