City education officials heeded cries of protest by local lawmakers and parents of students at I.S. 204 and last week agreed to speed up replacement of potentially toxic lights at the Long Island City school.
Department of Education (DOE) officials previously said replacement of the lights at I.S. 204 would be completed at some time within the next nine years–a timeline that angered local lawmakers and parents who lashed out at the agency for failing to quickly remedy the situation.
“It’s tragic that we have to wait until PCBs leak before we take action, and that we have to wait nine years to fix the problem,” Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer said at a September 25 rally outside the school.
Under the accelerated plan announced last week, replacement will be completed within two months, an agency spokesperson said.
A school custodian alerted administrators after he spotted a brown liquid dripping from a light fixture in a guidance counselor’s office on September 10, at the school on 28th Street and 37th Avenue.
School administrators quickly sealed off the room while a worker from Triumvirate Environmental, a firm under DOE contract, confirmed that the liquid contained PCBs.
DOE officials said no students were near the leak and it is unlikely that students were in the office this early in the school year.
Officials said suspected PCB leaks are investigated within 48 hours of discovery and that lights were replaced in the guidance counselor’s office, “almost immediately after the incident”.
DOE recently entered “year two” of the agency’s decade-long plan to remove and replace light fixtures in each of the city’s 700 school buildings, an agency spokesperson said.
The spokesperson confirmed that all city school buildings have light fixtures with PCBs, a coolant once used in electrical transformers and light fixtures.
The Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of PCBs in 1978, but it can still be found in products like fluorescent light ballasts manufactured prior to the ban. Light fixtures currently in use at most city schools contain ballasts with PCBs, the DOE spokesperson said.
The10-year DOE plan calls for replacement of the possibly toxic light fixtures with “energy efficient, PCB-free fixtures”, the spokesperson said.
