SoCalOilMan   Los Angeles

Posted: 08:32 am [PST] on April 21 2008

The reason I stumbled on this site was because they announced the opening of the site today.

A deprivation of the years of the benefits of reducing the overcrowding at Belmont High, and due to the litigation, being opened in a reduced capacity.

So, I guess the problems weren't insurmountable after all. If they had listened to the people living right on and next to the site, and those of us that were working the oil field, instead of the "experts" and television actors that knew better, these kids would have had a school.

SoCalOilMan   Los Angeles

Posted: 08:32 am [PST] on April 21 2008

From: Gabi Los Angeles
July 28 2006

"Amber, what are you talking about? What part of earthquake fault and methane gas don't you understand? This school was the worst planned ever and to go and say that it's because "they" don't want "hispanics" to have the school is completely ridiculous!

Do you really want your children to learn above a unfit, toxic site? Do you want to be exposed to the possible explosion/crumbling of the school should an earthquake happen? Is that really what you want?

This school would have been an awesome opportunity to the neighborhood, but it didn't happen because developers didn't think things through, not because they don't want Latinos in schools!"

If this was a toxic site do you think that they would let people live there? The oil field I worked had wells in closely scattered vacant lots and behind, next to houses in Downtown Los Angeles.

Most of the world doesn't realize that downtown L.A. sits over a sizable oil field that is there whether they produce it or not.

As far as the earthquake part of the comment, Gabi, you should move to Oklahoma so you only have to deal with tornadoes, or Florida and the East Coast where it's only hurricanes, or maybe the mid-west and floods.

You show me any place in SoCal that isn't effected by earthquake, they are discovering new fault lines all the time.

Leslie Dutton   Los Angeles

Posted: 08:22 am [PST] on April 21 2008

So Cal Oilman: Can you explain why the DTSC has held up the final approval for the remediation of the Belmont site?

SoCalOilMan   Los Angeles

Posted: 07:33 am [PST] on April 21 2008

I lived in and worked this specific oil field for 20 years. There was never a methane problem with this area, half the kids that would be attending this school lived right over the oil field in question. The "old" Belmont High School is only three block away.

The whole thing was a political play from the beginning and it can be blamed on the LAUSD board and activists like Patricia McPherson (from the prestigious school of having a continuing part in "Knight Rider").

With the underground barriers and positive ventilation (Air Conditioning)the kids would have been safer at the Belmont Complex than they were at home.

tom   los angles

Posted: 01:19 pm [PST] on February 06 2008

so much money

Sally selznick   Minnesota

Posted: 08:04 am [PST] on February 03 2008

We left LA four years ago. I had not followed the rest of Belmont's idiocies, but planned to mock it in a novel I'm writing about our time in LA. Thank you for your research.
Sally Selznick

Janet Sterman   Newton, MA

Posted: 06:40 am [PST] on January 27 2008

Feel free to send your investigators to Newton MA to watch our own high school construction boondoggle happening as we speak

vickie   gardena

Posted: 08:27 pm [PST] on December 20 2007

What is happening to the site of the new Belmont High School? Is the site completely demolished? Have they taken care of the methane problem?

Leslie Dutton   Los Angeles

Posted: 07:55 pm [PST] on October 20 2007

Angela, as a Belmont High School Grad, you never had the opportunity to attend the "Belmont Learning Center" currently under construction and the topic of this discussion. As a Belmont High grad you need not worry about being exposed to the toxic hazards, cited by experts on the site of the "Belmont Learning Center". Thank you for raising this issue so that we could clarify the difference between the two locations and so others will realize the old Belmont "High School" is not the center of this controversy.

Angela Estrada   Fontana,California

Posted: 04:53 pm [PST] on October 17 2007

I donn't see how they can say there is toxic waste on the new Belmont HS site I lived on that property for 21 yrs and am now 54 yrs old. My parents me home from the hospital in the year 1953 when do you say the contamination was the it had to be before we lived there because as long as I could remember ther were only houses there and to this day I have had nothing wrong with me. I also have two sisters the same thing lived there til we were growen and not any of us have ever been diagnosed with any type of unusual illness or any type of cancer. What is wrong with you people throwing away money like that. Oh and by the way I graduated from Belmont High in 1972. You can check records my name at that time was Angela Rodriguez.