West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Thank you for watching. Good evening, everybody. And thank you for joining us for town hall number two to discuss the environmental testing at Kennedy High School and the Richmond Swim Center. Thank you to all the guests we have here in the Richmond auditorium this evening. And thank you to all of our guests joining us online for the live stream. We appreciate you all joining us as we dig deeper into the conversation about the testing. Again, this evening, we have our panel of guests to join us, so I will quickly have them introduce themselves, starting with Marika from DTSC.

Good evening. Thank you for having me. I am Marika Hughes. I am the branch chief of site mitigation and restoration program at DTSC, which is the Department of Toxic Substances Control. And I am also a licensed geologist.

Good evening, everybody. I am Claudio Sorrentino. I'm the senior toxicologist for Northern California, and I work in the same department as Marika.

Hello, everyone. I'm Cheryl Cotton, superintendent of the West Contra Costa Unified School District.

Good evening. My name is Jeff Carter, interim associate superintendent of business services for West Contra Costa Unified School District.

Good evening, everyone. LaShonda White, deputy city manager for community services for the city of Richmond.

Good evening. Nikki Mastate, deputy city manager of internal services for the city of Richmond.

And I believe we have a guest online to introduce themselves as well.

Yes, I'm Gina Simon. I am the Chief of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at UCSF.

Really want to emphasize this has been a cross-agency effort of a magnitude that has been really impressive in terms of people coming together quickly, working together collaboratively, and really moving towards a goal of supporting our students and our community and our families in a way that has been incredibly impressive. Thank you all for your patience as we've navigated this unique situation, and thank you all for continuing to join us and follow this really important information for all of our students, families, and community. So with that, I'll turn it over to Superintendent Cotton to introduce or welcome some of our special guests in the room, and also folks that have been supporting us, and we'll move through the agenda from there.

Thank you, Principal Luongo. Welcome. Glad to be here for our second cross-agency town hall meeting. I do want to acknowledge a number of our elected officials and dignitaries who are here either in person or are watching online right now. I do want to acknowledge our board president is here in person. Board President Guadalupe Inanna is here. We also have Trustee Smith-Folds and Trustee Gonzales-Hoy who are both watching online this evening. We appreciate their support. We appreciate the support of all of our community. We appreciate the support of all of our elected officials and leaders within a variety of agencies who have been very supportive of us. I do recognize that we have our fire department present here in support, Richmond Fire Department, as well as we've had our police department, Richmond Police Department has been here to support us as well. I also want to recognize Dr. Ori Tisvielli, which I probably pronounced incorrectly, who's the Chief Public Health Officer for the Contra Costa County Department of Public Health. So again, this partnership is true. You have three agencies here, three organizations here, but there have been a number of organizations who have also continued to support us and support this work, making sure that our students are off to a safe and healthy start of their school year. I will go ahead and just give you an idea of what's happening this evening. Following these welcomes and introductions, we will have updates, both from West Contra Costa, from the Department of Toxic Substances Control, as well as from the City of Richmond. We'll, after our present end, I'm sorry, Dr. Gina Solomon from UCSF is also joining us online. Once we've had updates and provided that information to you all, we will move forward with questions and answers from the community. We'd like to know what you're interested in learning more about as we move through this process. Next slide. I believe we've moved through this and everyone has done their introductions and said welcome and hello. We can go to the next slide. I have great news. Okay, I need a great news energy in this room. I got great news. Based on the data that has been collected, our scientists and our medical experts have let us know that there is no evidence of vapor intrusion at Kennedy High School, and there is no evidence of immediate or long-term health concerns from PCE in our soil gas. That is exciting news. Thank you. I am so appreciative, again, of all the agencies who have stepped into assisting and supporting our students, our staff, and our school district as we learned about the potential of a problem situation and everyone stepped up and showed out and showed up to support West Contra Costa Unified School District. So for that, I am deeply appreciative. Thank you. Next slide. We're going to talk a little bit about what we did find, both from the district's perspective, but then we also have our experts from our regulatory agency, the Department of Toxic Substances Control. Next slide.

Okay. We're going to let Liz Sanders speak to this slide.

Thank you, Jeff. We wanted to talk just a little bit of a refresher. We know many members of our community have been with us throughout the past few weeks in this conversation. For those who may be joining the conversation newly this evening, we wanted to talk a little bit about what is this chemical that we have been so interested in understanding if it's in our indoor air or not, and that's PCE. So what this is is tetrachloroethylene, also known as PCE. It's a manufactured chemical. This is something that had been used as the main solvent in dry cleaning from the 1940s through the 2000s. As a state, we began phasing this out in 2007 as our understanding of this chemical and its toxicity changed. And as of 2023, the California Air Resources Board bans the use of PCE in California dry cleaning.

Okay, so under the guidance of DTSC and SOCOTEC, our independent tester, we did several sub-slab indoor and outdoor tests across the Kennedy campus. The majority of those tests revealed that inside our buildings and classrooms, there were very minimal traces or non-detectable amounts of PCE. However, in the kitchen and metal shop, there were results that do show detectable levels of PCE and that DTSC says are likely from consumer products. And we will be pausing the use of those space out of an abundance of caution in order to allow for further evaluation. But as a result of that, we will be returning to the Kennedy campus in a safe and supportive way for all of our students and staff on Tuesday, August 18th, for the first day of school. And with that, I'd like to introduce Dr. Gina Solomon, Chief of Occupational, Environmental, and Climate Health at the UCSF to provide a medical perspective on this news. Next slide.

Yes, thank you, and I hope you can hear me there. I wish I were there with you. I'm in Salinas for some other meetings, so I'm joining remotely for a few minutes to share the good news. I was fully briefed this morning by DTSC and the rest of the team about the results, and I am... very happy to say that I feel extremely confident that the school is safe and that it will remain safe due to the influence of the school district. So basically what we know is that plume is still there and there is some deep down in the soil some contamination and contamination is mostly in the groundwater which is quite deep below the school and below the neighborhoods and so the concern had bears coming up through the soil and that has been conclusively shown not to be true so I am so pleased that the school decided not to take any risks and to do the full testing and to make a science-based decision, which they did. And they're also going to be doing many things to make sure that the new constructions on the site have appropriate protection and that there's ongoing monitoring to make sure that if that plume moves in the future, that we know it. So that is what needs to happen going forward. But if I were a parent of a Kennedy High School teen, I would feel totally comfortable sending my child to that high school. If I were a teacher or a staff member working there, I would feel very comfortable going to work. So that's my assessment. I'm very glad that it turned out this way. And so this is very good news.

All right. With that, we are going to have Assistant Superintendent Liz Sanders provide some additional information.

Thank you very much, Dr. Solomon, for sharing that perspective. It's been so valuable to have our medical partners, our medical doctors as partners in this work alongside our environmental scientists. We want to let Dr. Solomon go for the evening. We really appreciate you zooming in while you're offsite. And we are going to go back to our presentation and go to a really critical slide. about our results, I think, which will help our community understand exactly the data that we looked at with Dr. Solomon, with DTSC, with our third-party testing contractor this morning. So if you can take us back to our slides, and we'll go to our results slide. Thank you very much, Dr. Solomon, and have a great evening. Right, if we can go perfect. We're going to head just back, yes, to this slide. Great. Thank you. And we will turn it over to our colleagues at DTSC.

Sorry. It is, I'm going to confess, hard to hear what is said on the other mics because of the echo in the room. Give me one second to get back there. Yeah. So it is important to recognize that we did find some PCE in some of the rooms, specifically the welding shop and the kitchen. The concentrations in both rooms are below Cal OSHA occupational standards. The level of PCE in the welding shop is also below DTSC's commercial screening level. The value in the kitchen space is just a touch above. And the really great news is that all the other rooms were below our residential screening level. So they are safe for occupancy if you want to live there 24 hours a day.

Thank you, Marika. And now we'll head to just a little bit more of a perspective from our colleagues at DTSC.

And so I'll make a couple of, I'll make one very bold statement, which is what you're seeing on the screen right now. DTSC is confident that there is no vapor intrusion at Kennedy High School based off of the samples and data that have been collected to date. This is because we have collected both indoor air, outdoor air, and sub-slab samples, sub-slab soil gas samples, and there was almost nothing detected in the sub-slab samples, which means that there is nothing to move from the ground into indoor spaces. The detectable levels of PCE in the kitchen and welding shop, while they were above our conservative residential limits, they do fall below the OSHA limits. In addition to this, because this is a question that has come up in our conversations over the last week and a half, DTSC is committed to maintaining a working relationship with the district and supporting Kennedy High during this and as we are evaluating next steps. Thank you. Anything else?

Okay, City of Richmond, to you now.

Thank you. Again, LaShonda White, Deputy City Manager for Community Services. Last week, we shared that consistent with the district's precautionary approach, the city also temporarily restricted access to the Richmond Swim Center, which is right next to Kennedy High School on the same campus. We are also really excited about the results and that based on the new data that was analyzed by DTSC as well as the third party consultant, the city does plan to reopen the swim center and begin moving programs back to the facility during the week of August 24th. So we have some time to reschedule our staff that are all programming at the Richmond Plunge right now. And also we need time to communicate to the community and our patrons that the services and programs are moving back to the site next to Kennedy High School, the Richmond Swim Center. So we're really excited and we'll continue to work with DTSC and Kennedy High School and the district on this topic. Also, we want to share that last week, our Richmond Fire Department, out of abundance of caution, was coordinating with DTSC to better understand the scope of the issue. And they are in the audience tonight, so we really want to thank them for their service. Out of abundance of caution, the hazardous materials response team conducted air monitoring along the school fence line on Cutting Boulevard, South 45th Street, and Burke Avenue. That's part of their role as the fire department, and they have their own testing. equipment and all the readings were in normal ranges, so we just wanted to share that with the community. So in addition to the testing that was done at the Kennedy High School site, our staff, the Richmond Fire Department, also went out and did additional testing along the fence line to make sure there was no need to shelter in place or anything, so everything was okay there. And we will continue to look at data and have continued conversations. So we've also, as shared, the city also has some other sites that they're looking at with regards to vapor issues within the soil. So our consultants actually completed an additional round of testing at a nearby site. Our samples have been sent off to the lab for additional analysis, and the results will be shared when available. I just want to make sure the community knows that we are taking this issue serious. We have continued to do testing in the sites that we know about in collaboration with DTSC. We will rely on their technical expertise and guidance as we consider next steps. And we will continue to keep our residents, neighborhood councils, and elected officials informed as verified information becomes available. And then I will- Turn it to Deputy City Manager Masday.

Thank you, LaShonda. Nikki Masday, Deputy City Manager of Internal Services. Just to reiterate, the city will continue to collaborate with DTSC and the selected officials and will stay informed. We will also stay engaged and continue to communicate with our community as available information comes to us with their expert guidance from DTSC. And we will also stay in touch with the Contra Costa Unified School District. Thank you.

Thank you so much, City of Richmond. Next slide, please. All right. This is our Q&A session. Yes, it is. All right, and I did just want to say, as the principal of Kennedy High School, getting this news today was extremely uplifting and exciting for our school community. I was in with all of our teachers this morning, and there was loud cheers and excitement to be able to welcome our students back to the campus that they know and love. on Tuesday. So we are really excited to get things started in the space that we know embraces who we are and who our identity is. And so just appreciate everybody for the hard work and being able to turn this around so quickly. With that, we'll follow the same procedure as last time for our Q&A session. Anybody in the audience is welcome to go to the mics that are set up on the sides, and then we'll also alternate with folks online. If we don't have any folks here with questions in the audience, we'll continue to go with folks online until... we get to a point where we've completed the questions. We have a significant amount of time remaining at this point, and this meeting and session is scheduled to end at 8 o'clock. So, yes, and Assistant Superintendent Sanders, go ahead.

Thank you very much, Mr. Longo. And for those who are joining us online and seeking the opportunity to ask questions, the QR code on the screen is what you're welcome to use to ask the questions or the tiny URL link. Folks who are here in person are also welcome to use that tool to ask questions. You're welcome to ask questions via that tool in any language, and we will make sure that those are voiced here in person.

All right. So if there are any questions online, let's go ahead and start there.

There are zero questions online.

Okay. Well, this is an indication. Oh, we do have a question in the audience. Go ahead, please. Just a sec. There you go.

Okay, there we go. Just curious on what the next step with the welding shop and the kitchen is and what state officials recommend in the remediation of getting those levels to where they should be.

you for your question you want to start with dtsc on the testing piece and then we'll go from there so the next step for next steps for the welding shop and the kitchen essentially are going to be technically up to the district the district has some uh plans in on this point but from dtsc's perspective The concentrations are actually safe for people to be around. It is important to recognize that the samples that were collected were collected under a very conservative set of conditions. So there's no air flow. It's not typical use. But under typical use, there will be air flow. There will be HVAC operating. In the kitchen, there will be the fans going. So there does need to be some additional sampling in those spaces, especially the kitchen, just to confirm what everything is like under typical conditions, typical working conditions. And I think with the welding shop, people are not typically there, or the students aren't there very long. They wouldn't have an exposure of any note, technically, because it's probably, what, an hour? And I will say the other thing that we learned in this process, right, because these two areas had detections, is that we did recommend doing a chemical inventory in terms of what is stored in those rooms. And technically, it is good to do across the school. It's good to have an understanding of what's present.

Second part of that question was about the mitigation strategies moving forward.

Yeah, so our plan for the kitchen and the welding shop or class is do a survey of the chemicals in those classrooms, remove those consumer products that we believe are enhancing that level of PCE on the test results. We'll do a second round of testing on those two areas to confirm that that brings the PCE levels down, and then we would open up those spaces back up for use on the Kennedy campus as soon as we have that confirmation.

Thank you very much. Do we have any online questions at this time? While you're checking that, I'm going to go ahead to our next guest over here. Please share your question.

Oh, hi. I'm a community member, an employee, and a parent. And I live directly across the street from Kennedy. So thank you so much for putting together this forum here so we can come in here. And it's great to have it online because last week I couldn't make it. I'm here. So my question is, I have a couple. Was the Burke campus tested? I know it's attached to Kennedy. I'm just wondering if that site was tested too because I thought part of the school has moved on to that campus after Cameron moved out of it. How often will the site be tested in the future? Just to make sure these levels aren't rising. I know you say it's not at a max threshold or whatever you want to call it. But how often are you recommending to come back and retest the campus because we have to make sure this is a safe environment and the welding room is used a lot by the students at Kennedy because I'm at the board meetings And they always talk about that welding program. And all the students love it. They spend a lot of time in there, along with that teacher or teachers who are in there all day long. So we need to make sure that person is not breathing in these chemicals. I have no idea how the chemicals spread, but we need to make safe work environments for everyone. My other question is, what happened to the PCE substance that was discovered at the corner of 45th and Cutting? If I recall correctly, it was found on that corner. So was it removed? Did environmentalists come in and remove it, or is it still there, or do you feel like it's so low you don't need to touch it? I say that because I'm at the corner of 45th and Cuddy. I look to school every day. I watch them open the gates and close the gates. I see them digging all the time, and the dirt blows into my house. And my kids are in the backyard playing. And for us community members who live in the surrounding area of Kennedy, we want to make sure it's safe. I know this isn't just a district problem. And I'm so glad to see the city of Richmond here too. And yeah, those were my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. And just for clarification, you asked, was there testing on the Burke side of the Kennedy campus? Did I hear you correctly? Yes. Okay.

Thank you.

All right. So testing sites and location question. Who would speak to that this evening?

I would speak to it, but I'm not entirely sure what part of the campus we're talking about.

The Burke side would be on the west, and it curves around to the southern portion of the campus.

So, to be fair, no, there wasn't sampling on that side, mostly because the groundwater plume, as we know it, the soil vapor plume as well, as we know it, has not gotten that far west. So we focused the investigation in the area where we would expect to see it, close to the samples that we already have that indicate that it was detectable. So that was the reason why it wasn't done on the western side. Doesn't mean it won't be in the future, but at this point, it doesn't seem like there is a risk to student staff or anyone on that side.

The second part of the question, Marika, is probably you as well, regarding the, so it was identified in the soil, underground, on the eastern portion of the campus. And I think, if I heard correctly, the question was, is it still there? What mitigation factors are taking place to get rid of it? Those kind of, along that line? Yeah.

So the detection that led to this indoor air and sub-slab investigation is still there. It was just a point. It'll be sampled again in the future. I don't know the monitoring schedule on that yet. obviously has moved very fast, and we need a little bit more time to look at the data. We need a finalized report. But at this point in time, there isn't a structure planned there, so I don't anticipate there being any potential vapor intrusion at that exact location. But we're going to monitor. We're going to understand it more into the future. In terms of potential mitigation or remediation, that's something for us to discuss further down the line.

I'm going to build off of that question a little bit, if you don't mind, and ask if I were a resident in that area and I wanted to take precautionary measures in my own home, what might be some recommendations or how could I address it in my own, what I can control in my space?

So, to that end, I'm not necessarily going to recommend any mitigation at this point, because we don't know that there is any vapor intrusion in those homes in the area. It is important to know, and I think Ian said it a week ago, that where we have collected indoor air samples in residences, we have not, in this area, we have not seen detections of PCE, at all i can't remember i don't think we've seen it at all in indoor air in those uh homes the only site where we did have an indoor air hit in a residence was adjacent to omo dry cleaners but the concentrations at omo are significantly higher in the soil i think it was in the millions micrograms per cubic meter i should always add units so in terms of mitigation at this point there is no reason to plan for it but i will add dtsc is going to continue the investigation we are going to continue looking at potential indoor spaces as we learn more about the plume thank you superintendent cotton

I do just want to reiterate the concern is around vapor intrusion. It's what is happening with that underground plume and how would that affect our staff and our students at Kennedy High School. There's no evidence of vapor intrusion on our school campus. I just want to reiterate that again. The concerning areas on campus are more likely due to consumer products. degreasers in the kitchen. It's other products that may have been detected while we were doing the assessments. But our scientist friends have let us know that there has been no evidence of vapor intrusion at Kennedy High School's campus.

Thank you. To our online question. Oh, excuse me, just a moment. One more.

While we did not test on the western part, we tested between where we had the detection initially in the soil, and then we went westward. So we tested in between the west side and the east side, and we found no contamination there. So there is no sign of the things going from the east to the west. basically we found him we test in the middle and there was nothing there basically so that's why we did not continue the testing in the west side as well yep miss white thank you and

As a resident of the City of Richmond and for other residents of the City of Richmond, we understand that this is a concern. Some people have this as a question in terms of what, and I appreciate the question from Principal Luongo around what does this mean for community members who live nearby the campus. So we will continue to work with DTSC. I think if there is some understanding that additional testing is needed, we're doing additional testing in areas where we know there may be some concern. I shared earlier that we've done some additional sampling in areas nearby Kennedy High School and are waiting for the results from that. So as we continue to work with DTSC, find out more information if additional testing is needed, the city of Richmond is doing that testing as appropriate. We will continue to share with community members, excuse me, and neighborhood councils if there is anything that we need to share. And we've been doing that with regards to another site, Mira Flores, for some years.

Thank you. And Mr. Carter?

Yeah, and just to clarify, one of your questions was about the old campus that was on site. Those are the portables that are on the southern portion of the campus. We did test the indoor and outdoor air on the portables, and there was either minimal or non-detectable amounts of PCE in the portables, and no vapor intrusion.

I know that part of your question also was around construction, and there is construction happening on campus. I think people in the community are trying to speculate, is that related to this vapor plume? And I don't believe that it is, but I would ask folks from DTSC if you can help with that clarification around the construction that's happening on campus, and is that related at all to vapor intrusion or anything like that?

So one of the questions, which we have just received again, that we've been talking about a lot, is whether or not the construction caused the release, and it did not. The construction actually technically has nothing to do with the detections that we found. The only way in which the construction is related is, unfortunately, that is why we reached out to the district.

Tell us more.

about why you reached out or why we reached out? So to recap, we had collected or the city had collected a sample about a block north of the high school. And when we received those results, we were thinking about them. And we had, I believe, talked to an official and were made aware of construction happening at the school. And for us, New buildings is a great opportunity to install a vapor barrier if it's determined to be needed. And groundwater plumes, soil gas plumes move over time. We know that for a fact. And so it is important for us to think about the future in this regard. And so that was why we reached out. We wanted to see what we could do to help get that process going. And that has led us here.

So we received preliminary results from the initial soil testing that happened in mid-January. We received those results on January, I'm sorry, January, July.

It feels like seven months. It does.

We received those results on July 31st. So we did testing since mid-July. We got preliminary results and immediately took action on them. So that was a Friday afternoon. We learned about a potential problem. Monday at 7 a.m., we were on a call with all of these folks and more to say what are we doing and what's happening. We were able to initiate, based on a recommendation from DTSC, additional tests. both for indoor air, outdoor air, and additional soil samples. We've received those results, preliminary results, a day ago, and we are here. So that's the process to give some context and timeline to what's been going on.

With regard to the outdoor air, we did not, in some samples, we were not able to measure PCE. Where we can measure it, it was even lower than in other parts of this general neighborhood that we measured. So the outdoor air is fine. The level of PC in the outdoor air are not of concern at all. So it's not that the construction are bringing gas up. We tested the outdoor air. There's no PC, or it's extremely low.

Thank you, everyone, for those responses. Online. Online.

We do have questions now online. We have a question about next steps for the school. In terms of the areas that were determined to have those detectable levels of PCE, will students have access or have any contact with those areas? So if we can talk about what we're doing in terms of a temporary pause for those areas and probably some next steps, especially on nutrition services might be useful.

Yeah, so while we have While we do additional testing in those buildings and those classrooms that there were detectable levels of PCE, we are restricting access to students for those buildings. While we remove the consumer products and do additional testing, students will not have access to those rooms or buildings. And while we do the mitigation and second round of testing, once those results come in, we will be able to make a determination at that point if we will then continue to use those buildings with the students at that time.

Thank you. We'll go to another online question.

Thank you, we have a question about ongoing mitigation. How often will future testing be done and will parents have access to that information? And I know some of that we are going to continue to be in partnership on, but I can throw that to our colleagues at DTSC. There's probably a partial answer from DTSC, a partial answer from West Contra Costa Unified on this one.

Yeah, so our plan is to work closely with DTSC regarding future testing and timelines of those. Again, this is really early in the process, but we have had some discussions about when that might occur. Potentially when school is either out of session, like a winter break, to get testing results in another season. So test results can vary based on the temperature and weather conditions outside. So we are looking at another round of testing at a point when students are not on campus. I'll let DTSC add any additional info if they would like.

Can you repeat the question, Ms. Sanders?

Yes, the question was about how often future testing will be done and if parents will have access to that information.

So in terms of the frequency of future monitoring, that's something we haven't determined yet. That is something that we are going to continue working with the district on in the coming weeks and months to determine the best course of action.

And then the second part was how can folks get access to the data that does come back?

So I am going to post it to EnviroStore. I need to just confer with the district and their consultant on a couple of things before we do get it uploaded, but we should be getting it uploaded probably tomorrow.

Thank you.

And I can just remind the public and Firestore is the public database where DTSC shares their information. There is a page for the Kennedy High School site and the other two Richmond sites. And for the school district, we will continue to publish all information about this publicly on our single web page on our website that tracks all of these updates. That concludes our online questions for the moment. If another one comes in, I will let you know.

Thank you so much. And same in the room, we don't currently have any questions in the room, but if anybody does have a question, I would encourage you to go to the mic now before we transition. But you don't have to go that fast. Take your time. But we appreciate you coming and asking a question. So the floor is yours.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm interested in what the financial impact has been for the district when it comes to ordering anything to help address the problem, calling in consultants. What has been the financial implication?

Yeah, so the soil indoor-outdoor and sub-slab testing has cost somewhere north of $100,000. We have purchased air purifiers for the classrooms and office spaces. There are mitigation factors in order to clean the air for those. And then we are also needing to move some materials and supplies from the buildings that are no longer being used at the current moment in the kitchen and welding class. So we will be moving some of those supplies to the portables to continue school on a modified campus. So there are some costs associated with that. We do have bond dollars and general fund dollars to cover the costs of testing as well as the additional materials and supplies and moving that has gone into this project.

Thank you. Any additional questions online at this time?

We do, and Mr. Luongo, I think this one may actually be for you. As a parent of an incoming freshman, what kind of support will be offered to new students not familiar with the school campus? We did attend the orientation earlier this week, but this was hosted in another school. My daughter was looking forward to touring the school prior at this event. Will there be opportunities to tour the campus prior to the first day of school, or will maps of the school be provided to students?

Great question and thank you so much and we're excited to welcome you and your family to Kennedy High School this year. The campus will be open on Monday for anybody that could come through and check it out if they just wanna walk around and get a feel for the campus, you're welcome to stop by. Otherwise, our staff is happy. We have a lot of amazing, if you came to any of our events so far, student leaders at Kennedy High School who are excited to welcome our freshmen and support them as they navigate a new campus and a new space. they will be happy to give tours and support our students that are just looking for any additional support. Campus is easy to navigate, but we also know any new space can be a little bit intimidating, and going into high school is exciting, but also intimidating, and so please don't hesitate to come check out the campus on Monday, or if, you know, we'll coordinate and set you up with one of our upperclassmen to be able to help you navigate the campus on Tuesday. So looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday. Anything else online?

The only other, what we have online is not a question, but it is a comment. It's a concern that the PCE chemical is dangerous. So I am wondering if our colleagues at DTSC could speak a little bit to the residential screening level that we've used and kind of help us understand what the level of concern should be for a family given the levels of PCE that we're seeing here.

I didn't hear the last part. The level of concern?

If a family is feeling concerned, feeling concerned that what has been found is dangerous, what might be useful for a family to know to understand what our results are and if families should be concerned?

Basically, our screening level for residential is not a level of concern. It's a level in which we are very, very sure that there are no effects. For somebody that lives there 24-7, 350 days a week, a year. for 26 years. So that is way exceeding what a normal person would do at a school. Even a staff person that works their whole professional life there would not be exposed to that. Even my own mother that spent a lot of time at home when she was still alive, she would go out to grocery shops, she would not be home 24-7. So these are extremely conservative levels that we set, not to say that if you're above that there is a problem, but we want to start an investigation when we are sure there is not a problem. So it's not that if you're greater than 0.46, you have a problem. But that is a trigger for us to start looking and making sure that things are fine. Does that answer your question?

It does. Thank you very much. And that concludes our current questions.

We have a question in the audience. Yep.

I'm so sorry. So I'm trying to get an idea of the science behind all of this, the plume, the fact that it is in the groundwater, the soil, and this could shift and move. Wouldn't it be better to go down there and get whatever this mask is to remove it out of the community? And how does this move and what are the potential side effects down the line with this contamination and this vapor intrusion?

DTSC team? Are you good on the question?

I didn't hear it very well, no.

I'm going to repeat a little bit and then feel free to add on to it. Basically, if I heard correctly, we know this is under the ground. Wouldn't it make sense to go down to where it is and remove it from the ground? if that's even possible. And then what was the other piece that you added onto that?

Yeah. If you don't remove it, then what are the potential impacts of it shifting? Like Dr. Solomon said, that it could shift and move, and would it then impact other areas of the school or the community living nearby?

Yeah, and you also had said, how does it move, if I remember correctly, too. So, yeah.

So the second part was how does it move? Okay. Yes. So your first question, should we just go out and clean it up? That would be ideal, but we don't necessarily understand the extent of the contamination, and we also haven't thoroughly identified the source. And so it is very important for us to identify the source. We are going to continue to investigate the extent of the plume, and when we have that understood, we will probably evaluate different remediation options, and remediation being cleanup options. At this point, as I've said before, there's no indication that there's vapor intrusion into the homes. I understand the concern, but we have no evidence of it. But we are going to do further work on it. We hope to understand more about it in, unfortunately, the coming years because it does take some time in order to pull all this off. What was the other part?

So how does it move?

How does it move? I am going to say very clearly that I am not a chemist. But it diffuses into air. It dilutes or gets diluted into the groundwater. And it essentially moves and flows with those two different media underground. And it likes to follow the easiest path. We will call that a preferential pathway. If you ever come to any of the vapor intrusion seminars that DTSC and the Water Board hold. But areas where, and this is going to get too nitty gritty probably, but where the soils are a bit more coarse-grained, gases and water move faster in that area. Soils like clays, they don't move as well. And the contamination tends to get stuck on these smaller particles. And often, those don't present as much of a risk, but it's not always true. I'm going to be honest on that one.

If I remember correctly from the medical presentation webinar the other evening, I believe they were mentioning that the soil underneath the Kennedy campus is pretty densely packed. I don't remember exactly what they said. Did anybody recall that component? Possibly not.

So I was not in attendance for that one. There have been a lot of meetings. I've had a lot to catch up on. But I do believe my... I have a very limited memory on the soils beneath the site. But I believe in one portion, I think it might be the... western portion of the site. The soils are a bit more sandy and the soils on the eastern side might be a little bit more fine-grained, clayey, silty along those lines.

And then one other piece to that. I also have been learning a lot over the last two weeks about this whole toxic plume and all of the science behind it. The sense that I was getting As the chemical moves underground and moves further away from the origin site, that the concentration levels decrease. Is that accurate or it just varies depending on circumstances?

I am going to say that both are true. Traditionally, the further you get from the source area, you do tend to get a lower concentration. But as I've said before, the plumes are going to move. And as they move, obviously the concentrations are going to accumulate as they move along. However, I did mention preferential pathways. And so something like underground utilities. Those are usually buried in a certain type of material and that happens to be very good for vapors to move through as well. So there are a lot of things that are going on.

Appreciate that. Thank you for your question. Any online questions?

No further questions online.

Is there anybody else in the audience this evening that would like to ask a question? We greatly appreciate our online audience, our audience here in the room this evening, and everybody that's engaged over the last couple of weeks on this really, really important topic about keeping our community and our schools safe the level of support that we've received not only as a school but just as a district and just the engaged process with the multitude of meetings and conversations that have been taking place this has been an incredible learning experience for a lot of us a great teachable moment for our students and we are just deeply appreciative of all the cross-agency partners that we've been working with to get to where we are today with the good news that there are no vapors in our classrooms that we're aware of and some additional testing is gonna go on in a couple of spaces based on the information we received. All of this is great news for Kennedy High School and our students and our community and we just are extremely grateful for everybody that's been participating in this process. Superintendent Cotton, any of our other panel guests, if you'd like to make any additional comments before we wrap up this evening, I'll just open up the table to conclude the evening remarks.

Thank you. Thank you, Principal Luongo. Again, we started with news that is celebratory, that there is no vapor intrusion at our Kennedy High School. We are welcoming students back on Tuesday, August 18th. staff will be coming back onto campus tomorrow and preparing classrooms. We are excited about celebrating our students. We're excited about supporting their learning. And that's really where our focus is. We would not bring our students back to a situation that was not safe. We would not bring our staff into a situation that was not safe. And so we are doing everything that we can to ensure the safety of our staff and our students. We will continue to monitor the situation, so this is not the end of this process. We will continue to be in partnership both with the city of Richmond as well as with the regulatory agency, the Department of Toxic Substances Control, to ensure that we are addressing any concerns that are raised, mitigating any problems that could arise, and again, maintaining the safety and health and well-being of our students and our staff.

Thank you so much. Any other concluding comments from everybody on the panel? All right. With that, thank you all so much for joining us and working collaboratively together. We greatly appreciate you. Thank you to everybody here in the audience, and thank you everybody at home. Have a wonderful night, everybody.