Parents have been trying to convince the school board to select another site for the school. Rhode Island - Hartford Park Tenants Association Parents brought an environmental racism lawsuit to challenge construction of an elementary school and two middle schools on land which had been used as a garbage dump for at least 25 years. Environmental testing revealed the presence of unsafe levels of lead, arsenic and petroleum products on the site. After a hearing, the elementary school was allowed to open and construction of the middle school was allowed to continue, with the condition that children remained indoors with the windows and doors closed at all times during the construction phase. Construction of the middle school was completed and both schools are now operating.
Parents are determined to proceed with the lawsuit to have the schools shut down.
School officials are now proceeding with construction of yet another elementary school on contaminated land, this time the site of a factory that burned down several years earlier. The proposed school, named for Cesar Chavez, will be a modern, fully equipped facility with enough computers, laboratories, sport fields and classrooms for 3,000 mostly Latino students. Within a quarter mile of the proposed site, industries spew nearly five million pounds of toxic pollution into the air every year. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to dredge the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal of Chicago. Sediments from the Canal, one of the most industrialized and polluted areas in the nation, are seriously contaminated.