Lead clean-up hampered by grant problems
From St. Louis American
http://stlamerican.com/articles/2007/04/12/news/community_news/comm02.txt
4/12/07
Lead clean-up hampered by grant problems
The City of St. Louis may end up ignoring homes that are most in need of lead remediation as it seeks to avoid losing millions of dollars in lead poisoning grant money. A series of letters from Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reveals a sharp decline in meeting targeted dates for home clean-ups
In 2004 and early 2005, HUD gave the City “green” ratings, which meant it was “either meeting or exceeding the quarter’s performance benchmarks.”
By late 2005, St. Louis had slipped to “yellow,” indicating that it was “behind on one of the performance components.”
Throughout 2006, the City’s ratings fell into the “red” category, signaling that it was “significantly behind its primary benchmark standards for completion of lead hazard control work.”
HUD commented that St. Louis had “not met the minimum benchmark standards for six consecutive quarters” and placed it in the “pre-high risk” category.
The City has received $7 million in two 2004 HUD grants. But HUD insists that the City must show progress on completion of lead remediation goals for these grants or it will not receive funds for a 2006 grant. This could trigger a loss of $3 million in funds. Though the City had promised to use grant funds to clean lead from 780 homes by the end of December 2006, it had only completed 317 homes.
“If you’re getting millions of dollars to remove lead from homes, you need to be spending the money doing what you said you would do,” said Willie Marshall, Chair of the Green Party Central Committee. “And you need to pick out homes in neighborhoods where the most children are being poisoned.”
Prioritization according to need does not appear anywhere in the “Workout Strategy” that the City’s Building Division completed on March 15, 2007 to submit to HUD. It proposes a catch-up plan which would focus on the largest multiple-family housing units it can find.
A major component of the document is to provide developers $5,000 lead remediation money for the first two units of housing property and $1,000 for each additional unit. This means that City money would average $3,000 for a 4-unit building and $1,080 per unit for a 100-unit property.
“Since 2005, the Greens have been encouraging the Slay administration to spend the most money where the most kids are lead poisoned,” said Green Party spokesperson Madeline Coburn.
“And now we find that the City is treating the size of an apartment complex as more important than the rate of childhood lead poisoning. They’re throwing the kids out the window to make up for the government’s failure to finish its work.”
Greens did react favorably to one part of the City’s Workout Strategy. In January 2007 the City adopted a program to encourage landlords to replace old windows when houses are vacant. The friction of opening and closing windows is the largest source for poisonous lead dust.
“Children have been poisoned by lead remediation which is done incorrectly and spreads dust through the home,” Coburn said.
“The City needs to require that every vacant home have lead-dangerous windows replaced before the property is rented or sold.”
Don Fitz, Ph.D., is co-coordinator of the Gateway Greens
