In response to parents’ concerns about lead levels as much as 15 times the legal limit, the Orleans Parish School Board has released an updated plan to remediate a temporary site for Audubon Charter School. Dubbed the Eastbank Swing Space, the tract of land between Richard, Orange, Constance and Annunciation streets in the Lower Garden District will be Audubon’s home for two years until the Broadway campus is remodeled.

After the state took nearly a year and a half to approve a city proposal to remove lead from childcare facilities, the program is stalled with the city, where it’s sat for the past three months. Still, environmentalists are happy that the money is finally free of the state’s tight grips with hopes that work soon can start on cleaning up day-care facilities.

In my recent article about the slow release of money from the state for a program to address lead contamination across New Orleans, I wrote about arsenic levels in soil that are supposed to trigger a clean-up under state Department of Environmental Quality policy. In a document sent to me from DEQ entitled “Arsenic sampling results explained,” it reads, “In Louisiana, the DEQ residential clean-up level for arsenic is 12 ppm,” or parts per million.