Neighborhood Development: Your Friendly Local Hospital’s Plans May be Hazardous to your Health
By Cheri Rae

True-life conversation:

“Honey, I just bought you a new book, it’s called Gutted.”
“Oh, thanks, but I’m still reading Rubble, Unearthing the History of Demolition.”
Hardly the kind of pillow talk we ever envisioned, but such, er, deconstructionist literature is now piled upon my husband’s and my nightstands for bedtime reading. We feel compelled to study these titles instead of reading the latest best sellers in order to educate ourselves and protect our family from the potential impacts to our health from Cottage Hospital’s proposal to knock down St. Francis Hospital and build 115 condos in its place. We live just three blocks away from the site; the more we learn, the more we worry and the worse we feel.
We recently attended a neighborhood meeting during which the Cottage development team introduced a physician/consultant from UCLA to allay the neighbors’ health concerns as they relate to the potential demolition of the present structure. However, during the question-and-answer period, Dr. Philip Harber, who specializes in occupational and environmental medicine, affirmed both that the neighbors have legitimate reasons for concern, and that certain individuals with existing medical conditions could potentially face serious, if not life-threatening consequences. “Cottage has a serious problem,” he admitted.
Dr. Harber explained that individuals at increased risk include the elderly, those who suffer from coronary artery disease, emphysema and significant respiratory illnesses, including asthma. Those individuals must be identified and their health monitored, he said. Since our family already copes daily with our son’s reactive airway disease, we’re particularly concerned about how two years of demolition and construction will affect his condition.
It strikes us as ironic that we’re dealing with a developer whose primary mission is health care, and that health care concerns have now been added to what is now a long list of overwhelming drawbacks to the proposed project. Until now, our primary concerns have been about the unconscionable waste of a community resource, the impacts of increased traffic and congestion, and the long-lasting effects of an ultra-dense project being plunked down in the middle of a neighborhood. Now added to the list is the issue of how this project will affect our own nine-year-old’s health for the rest of his life.
Certainly, he’s not the only one in the neighborhood who has a pre-existing condition. Many young people from toddlers to teens rely on inhalers to assist with their breathing; middle-aged folks suffer from heart disease and various chronic illnesses; and the neighborhood’s senior population includes those struggling with frail health and emphysema. In short, if this project is approved, a large number of individuals will suffer the effects of repeated exposure to toxic diesel emissions and particulate matter.
And there appears to be no escape from these severe consequences to community health. As the Air Pollution Control District put it in the agency’s comments about the project’s Draft EIR’s health risk analysis, “…the public health risk from this project should be classified as significant and unmitigable.”
Yet, these significant and unmitigable dangers in the air aren’t the only ones that pose serious health and safety concerns. Dr. Harber later cautioned me about the risks of heavy diesel trucks rumbling along narrow routes that pass parks, playgrounds or schools. Children and parents not only face toxic emissions, but the horrific possibility of being hit by a heavily loaded truck unable to stop in time, he said. With Kid’s World and Notre Dame schools located right on the Micheltorena access, Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens on the Arrellaga access, and Roosevelt School’s traffic pattern subjected to an estimated 16,920 truck trips hauling away 36 million pounds of solid waste, the possibility of the type of tragic accident the doctor warns about looms large.
When the hospital’s own health risks consultant warns of the dire consequences of destroying too much and building too much in such close proximity to an at-risk population, it’s clearly time for the Cottage Development Team and City officials to re-calculate the cost-benefit/risk-reward analysis for a housing project that now appears to be way too costly and way too risky, and one that has every potential to hurt far more than it helps.