BELMONT FIX COULD BE ONLY $8 MILLION NEW SYSTEM MIGHT SOLVE PROBLEM OF LEAKING GASES.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

The contaminated Belmont Learning Center site could be made safe for only $8 million, according to state regulators - half the amount that Los Angeles Unified officials once predicted and one-seventh what consultants had once proposed.

The gas-control plan, expected to be adopted by the state this spring, would allow the district to resume development of nation's costliest high school, which has a price tag that has jumped to $309 million after seven years of delays.

The estimated cost of the cleanup fell sharply once scientists thoroughly studied the former gas field. They devised a plan that diverts potentially explosive methane and poisonous hydrogen sulfide away from proposed buildings and vents them naturally from the landscaped areas.

``What we've been able to do is let science speak for itself,'' said LAUSD Board President Jose Huizar. ``It can be made safe and for less.''

School and state officials are confident the 25-acre high school will be made safe for faculty and students - but they said the crucial test would be the long-term maintenance of the gas-control system.

``For certain, the first five years, we're in great shape. No expense will be spared in the first five-year maintenance plan,'' said Angelo Bellomo, environmental health and safety director at the Los Angeles Unified School District.

``What I'm really worried about ... is how do we put in place the system and controls necessary that the systems are maintained as long as the school is in existence.''

So while they finalize plans to build the campus, the Department of Toxic Substances Control and school officials are hammering out a legal agreement that would require the district to regularly inspect and maintain the gas-monitoring system over the life of the high school.

Longtime critics of the project still worry about the safety of the students.

``Never, I mean never, have they built a high school over an abandoned oil field,'' said Anthony Patchett, an attorney who headed the L.A. District Attorney's Office's environmental crimes division and later a task force that investigated Belmont. ``When you look at the effect of small amounts of hydrogen sulfide, it's going to cause brain damage.

``The LAUSD and DTSC are exposing themselves to future liability.''

School board member David Tokofsky also has questioned the district's liability.

``I'm deeply concerned by the legal opinions that we received that we have absolutely no liability as a board by authorizing this,'' he said. ``I would feel much better if it were optional attendance rather than mandatory attendance (by students). That would certainly address the liability issue.''

The DTSC has the final say on whether the site is safe.

The agency is now circulating the plan to control gas by installing an impermeable plastic liner beneath the buildings with pipes to passively collect, then release, gases outside the buildings.

The system would be backed up with gas monitors and alarms that could flush fresh air into the buildings and the underground collection pipes if gas levels rose.

Landscaped areas and fields would have an 18-inch layer of sand beneath an 18-inch layer of soil. Sand is porous and would theoretically allow gases to vent.

In the beginning, the gas-control system would be inspected daily, then weekly and then annually or semi-annually.

``We designed a what-if, worst-case system,'' said Hamid Saebfar, DTSC division chief for school property, evaluation and cleanup. ``We did our own testing. We came up with the appropriate remedy that also considers cost.''

The DTSC gas-control plan would cost an estimated $8.2 million.

The agency plans to veto a $12.3 million plan that would lay a thick, plastic liner beneath the entire 25-acre site and install a system to vacuum and treat the gas. The more pricey option - similar to recommendations made to the district back in 2001 that topped $60 million - requires more maintenance and would not make the school safer, Saebfar said.

``We didn't see any benefit to it.''

Engineers said there was never a question of whether the high school could be built safely, but only how much the solution would cost.

``What could have been an easy engineering solution got blown up,'' said Professor Henry Koffman, director of construction engineering at the University of Southern California. ``The people who got hurt the most are the kids.''

LAUSD originally envisioned the Belmont Learning Complex as an $85 million private-public partnership with retail, affordable housing and the high school sharing the same downtown corner lot.

The district broke ground in 1997, and, soon after, state officials found serious contamination on the former oil field. Later, the district discovered an earthquake fault beneath some school buildings.

The project was twice abandoned, but the district resurrected in plans in 2003 to complete the high school for 3,100 students and develop a 10-acre park. Two buildings that sat on the fault line have been torn down. The district will install the gas-control systems in the existing buildings along Beaudry Avenue.

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

TO COMMENT

--Public comment on the Belmont remedial action plan will be accepted through Monday. Address comments to Jennifer Jones, project manager, Department of Toxic Substances Control, 1101 N. Grandview Ave., Glendale CA 91201; e-mail jjones(at)dtsc.ca.gov. The report is available online at www.laschools.org/vista-hermosa.

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box, 2 maps

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TO COMMENT (see text)

Map: (1 -- 2) BELMONT LEARNING CENTER'S HAZARDOUS GAS MITIGATION AREAS

SOURCES: SCS Engineers and Meredith & Associates, Inc.

Warren Huskey/Staff Artist