Waxman Document 41
P. 28/48:
Indemnifying the VA and ignoring the hazardous wastes problem may prove to be a costly mistake to Brentwood School: “The Sharing Partner shall indemnify and hold the Government harmless from any and all claims resulting from the negligent acts or omissions of the Sharing Partner, its officers, agents, students, employees, guests or invitees other than those who are DVA employees, patients and necessary attendants of guests.”
The full clause:
P. 31/48:
Rent charges for the 20 acres.
P. 36/48:
If Brentwood School breaks agreement, VA is not liable for the capital improvements undertaken by the school on the property.
P. 39/48:
The following, and final, snippet of this web page is crucial to the understanding of if and when Brentwood School knew, or should have known, about contaminants under its Shared Property fields. According to this section, the “VA, without expense to the Sharing Partner, will have qualified personnel present as appropriate on the Shared Property during grading by the Shared Partner to observe the grading activities for the potential presence of hazardous materials on the property. If such materials are encountered, the parties will consult and mutually agrees (sic) as to how the materials will be evaluated.”
The bad news for Brentwood School is that this says that they were jointly responsible with the VA for deciding to not excavate the bags of syringes found on what was to become the football field and to simply cover it with asphalt. It also suggests that all other reports of hazardous materials at the site, evidenced in other Waxman-supplied documents, were also under their purview, which makes sense since the school was paying for the construction of the $2.5 million athletic complex anyway.
The school, with its repeated assertions that no radioactive biomedical waste is under its fields, or that if it and non-radioactive waste actually was then it was entirely removed, seems questionable at best especially in light of these apparent violations of the contract with the VA regarding this Shared Property.
The good news for Brentwood School is that should hazardous materials be discovered in the Shared Property, then the VA will suspend collection of rent until they are remediated. In other words, if the athletic fields need to be excavated, Brentwood School will not have to pay rent until the work is completed, surely a small compensation for what is beginning to look like a school immersed in scandal that it could have possibly avoided were administrators during the time of construction, and personnel now, had chosen a truthful and transparent path in dealing with the toxics issues now plaguing the institution.
