U.S. Expected to Pay to Put School Out of Harm’s Way

Federal disaster officials are expected to award the Castaic Union School District more than $7 million Tuesday to move an elementary school from the shadow of Castaic Dam, according to a source close to the deal.

The award by the Federal Emergency Management Agency will conclude a long-running dispute during which Castaic school trustees accused the federal government of stalling the project with red tape.

The Castaic district has been trying since September 1994 to secure millions in federal earthquake mitigation funds to relocate 638-student Castaic Elementary School to safeguard them from flood waters if an earthquake broke the dam, just 1.7 miles away.

High-voltage power lines and underground oil pipelines nearby further endanger children, district officials argued.

School district Trustee Lester Freeman credited U.S. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) with helping speed the process in its final stages. But Freeman criticized the long, bureaucratic process that he contends put the students in danger.

“It’s like a funeral when you finally put the person in the ground and you feel a little better,” Freeman said. Receiving the award will mean “the nightmare of dealing with them is over,” he said.

District officials had estimated that it would take only three minutes for the campus to be flooded by 150 feet of water if the Castaic Dam ruptured during an earthquake.

State officials familiar with the 335-foot-tall dam have asserted that a failure in an earthquake is unlikely, because it is built to withstand a major temblor of 8.2.

But in the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake, school officials became concerned about the campus’ proximity to the dam and petitioned federal officials to move the elementary school--along with an adjacent middle school and district offices--to higher ground.

FEMA officials reacted positively at first, moving forward on a proposal to grant $18 million to relocate the three facilities.

Castaic officials, who had raised money through school bond offerings, began grading the new site in anticipation of receiving the federal funds.

Months later, FEMA informed Castaic school officials that a change in federal policy mandated that an environmental impact report be completed on the new site before work could commence.

Because work had begun before the report was completed, the district became ineligible for $10 million in funds earmarked for the middle school.

Officials then had to begin the application process anew.

A scaled-down request was submitted to FEMA late last year, asking for $7 million to move the elementary school and district offices.

“I always want more for the kids,” said Alan Nishino, the school’s superintendent. The end of the dispute will mean “we can bring this to closure and bring the kids to safer ground,” he said.

It remained unclear whether the district will pursue an appeal to regain eligibility for the middle school funds.

Schools have been located on the Castaic site since the 1880s, and the buildings there now date to the 1920s.

Even so, voters passed a bond measure to build the dam in the early 1960s, before the era in which environmental studies and local activism might have prompted reflection on the project’s impact on the schools.

The school, small at the time, was overlooked in the eagerness to construct the huge dam, which holds back 323,000 acre-feet of water, the equivalent of half of Los Angeles’ water needs for one year.

Federal officials countered that they were not responsible for locating the dam so close to the school and had promised to expeditiously process the elementary school application.

Tuesday’s ceremony will likely emphasize relief and perhaps a detente of sorts among the parties involved in the often-heated negotiations.

But trustees such as Freeman may need more time to cool off.

“I’m not a little bit happy at all,” he said. “I’m not happy we had to spend two years dealing with . . . bureaucracy.”