Roy Bradley, Sr. and Gerald Essex are set to appear in federal court on April 29 to begin a jury trial for violating the Clean Air Act when Bradley’s company, Lasting Impressions, converted a church into a charter school between August 2010 and September 2011. Both Bradley and Essex have pleaded not guilty and are facing up to five years in prison.
According to the charges, Bradley, as owner of the company, and Essex, who supervised the demolition and renovation, failed to follow proper procedure while removing asbestos-containing material from the site, putting more than 500 students at risk of asbestos exposure. If inhaled, asbestos can cause a variety of respiratory health problems, including mesothelioma.
A third man, Rodolfo Rodriguez, a former employee of Lasting Impressions, pleaded guilty to lying under oath to the grand jury that did the investigation, and he will be sentenced on June 15.
“My client states his innocence, and we’re going to try to show that at trial,” said James Piazza, Essex’s defense attorney. The defendants have maintained their innocence all along: a bid to have the indictment dismissed in January was rejected by U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington.
The issue of unsafe asbestos abatement is a prevalent one. In an attempt to save time and money, many contractors disregard the strict laws regarding the safe handling of asbestos. After Bradley and Essex’s arraignment, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a statement that underlined a point that the agency has stressed repeatedly: “There is no safe level of exposure to asbestos,” said Randall Ashe of the EPA’s Investigation Division.