Letters

It’s not officially not winter yet but the City of West Haven has posted the ordinance for snow removable in the New Haven Register and the Voice. Here is a short version of the rules. In a normal snowstorm you park on the odd side of the street when in an emergency it is posted you cannot park on the right side of the street you go on the left side.

Around City Hall in an emergency there is no parking on both sides of the street it will be posted. But on dead end streets it is never posted. People don’t know you park on the odd side.

So we were told when we call Public Works we are not a priority it goes like this: main streets first, the secondary streets next, then dead ends last. I asked why? Plows are too big for the streets.

We are taxpayers. We deserve service that comes with paying our taxes even though the new administration came into a deficit.

Anthony C. Krzeminski

I attended the Nov. 29, Town Hall meeting organized by West Haven High School (WHHS) parents Marilyn Wilkes and Christine Barrington to address asbestos/air quality issues during the ongoing renovation project at the school. The meeting was intended to be a parent-to-parent informal information-sharing event. There were five parents present along with city officials,  BOE members, superintendent, School Building Committee members, City Council members, builders and other members of the public including myself, a non-parent resident of West Haven.

Christine Barrington has been following the construction project for years. She is troubled by what she feels are unproven assurances of safety at the High School. Mrs. Barrington has been concerned with student health since her eldest child enrolled in WHHS last year. She is concerned  because even though no one disputes the well-documented history of asbestos release incidents occurring at WHHS,  there are no records to show that WHHS has ever been adequately cleaned (in accordance with applicable federal statutes) to ensure the students are not breathing in dangerous levels of airborne asbestos fibers. There are also no records that conclusively show that WHHS is free from dangerous levels of airborne asbestos fibers. The only conclusive test is “Aggressive TEM” (Transmission Electron Microscopy) sampling and testing in accordance with AHERA sampling and testing protocols. ‘Aggressive’ TEM testing requires agitating the air first using a blower or similar device to disperse any potential asbestos fibers.

Here are a few of the meeting points:

1.     Aggressive TEM asbestos air sampling must be preceded by a thorough cleaning of the building. It was not satisfactorily answered at the meeting why a complete cleaning could not be accomplished at the high school.

2.     Connecticut state law does not allow asbestos to be abated while school is in session, unless a waiver is granted. A waiver was granted for the high school project. In fact, a waiver request under the law has never been denied. The reason the waiver was granted was to maintain the construction schedule-currently four years.

3.     The high school renovation project was nine years in the making and will take four years to complete. According to project and school officials, performing the asbestos remediation while the school is not occupied would add five years to the project. However, all future asbestos remediations are scheduled for the summer months with a completion date still scheduled for March 2022, so this argument seems to be invalid.

4.     Since there is so much asbestos in the high school, the obvious question is why a new school was not built rather than perform a renovation of the existing school. A new school could have been built in less than four years’ time.   The answer is that the State of Connecticut will not fund a new high school project, only a renovation project. This school construction project was approved before the Department of Health noticed West Haven was in violation of the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA). At that point (2015), State of Connecticut advised West Haven that it needed to revise its construction plans in order to remove all remaining asbestos.

5.     Due to parental complaints, asbestos remediation is no longer carried out while school is in session, notwithstanding the waiver.

6.     Reports for periodic asbestos inspections as required by the EPA are missing  for the years 2009-2015. (For more information on the AHERA program, visit www.epa.gov/asbestos/asbestos-and-school-buildings).

7.     Only one of the camera locations was inspected after the 2016 camera installation project at West Haven High School.  The work was performed by unlicensed workers without any asbestos containment controls.

8.     There are other potential air-quality issues that should be investigated because of possible links to student health.

Pattricia Bollettieri