BHUSD Faces Clean-up of Raw Sewage Under Hawthorne School

After months of complaints about a foul odor permeating the auditorium of , officials discovered in November that a broken sewer line had created a pool of human waste soaking into the soil beneath the building.

The busted line was capped soon after the discovery, but the Beverly Hills Unified School District is now beginning the process of hiring a contractor to clean up the mess—the full extent of which has yet to be determined.

At its meeting Tuesday night, the Board of Education is expected to start the bidding process to hire a company to remove the soil contaminated by the raw sewage.

Hawthorne workers discovered the broken sewer line while searching for the source of the auditorium odor. They located a 15-foot stretch of tunnel under the building where human waste from the school's bathrooms had been leaking from an old pipe.

"Pipes break, unfortunately," said Alex Cherniss, the district's assistant superintendent for business services. "When pipes break in areas that are not accessible or not easily seen, it's hard to know when and where it happened. The odor tipped us off."

School staff began complaining about a stench coming through the auditorium vents last spring. The odor was initially attributed to Hawthorne's aging sewer injection pump, which has a history of emitting bad smells throughout the building and was replaced in late December, according to Cherniss, who served as Hawthorne principal from 2005-08. However, no complaints had ever been made about an odor in the auditorium when he was there, he said.

Cherniss, BHUSD chief facilities manager Nelson Cayabyab, and current Hawthorne principal Kathy Schaeffer confirmed that when the raw sewage was discovered under the school in November, the broken sewer pipe was capped that same month to stop the leakage. Since then, Schaeffer wrote in an email to Patch, "we have had no odors in the auditorium." Cayabyab said that within a few days of identifying the problem, a neutralizing chemical was added to the affected soil to absorb the waste. 

"The bottom line is that right now it's neutralized, the existing soil there," Cayabyab said. "There's really no harm to the students or anybody at the site." 

Cayabyab also said that the school's exhaust system has been fixed "to be able to evacuate a lot of the odors and smells that linger." It is unknown at this point if the air was unsafe to breathe.

School board President Brian Goldberg said he learned about the discovery of the human waste under Hawthorne "about two weeks ago." When asked why he wasn't notified of the problem earlier, he replied, "I don't have an answer for that." Cherniss said he had alerted Superintendent Gary Woods when the broken pipe was located.

It is unclear when the leak began. Both Goldberg and Cherniss said it was possible the sewer line was damaged during renovations of the school's auditorium in 2008, which were paid for with funds from 2002's Measure K bond and carried out by Strategic Concepts, the consulting company started by former BHUSD facilities director Karen Christiansen.

"We're trying to clean up a lot of messes from previous projects," Cherniss said.

Christiansen was to more than four years in prison after being in November of four felony conflict of interest charges for secretly negotiating to be an independent BHUSD contractor while performing her duties for the district. Christiansen was hired by the district in 2004 and reportedly received a total of $5.2 million from BHUSD between 2006 and 2009.

Strategic Concepts' records regarding repairs it made to Hawthorne and other city schools have not been made accessible to the district, Cherniss said. 

Hawthorne was built in 1914. A survey conducted in August to ready the school for renovations under Measure E—passed by voters in 2008 to finance the modernization of Beverly Hills' aging public schools—stated: "Several of the cast iron sewer laterals are severely corroded. Some appear to have holes or other significant defects." The survey recommended that the pipes be replaced. Hawthorne is slated to undergo Measure E renovations in late summer 2013. 

"We are going to test the soil and remove any soil that has been contaminated," said Goldberg, who was elected to the board after Measure K renovations had been approved. "We're doing everything we can to remediate the problem."

To view the agenda for Tuesday's school board meeting, click here.

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