City's Lead Paint Law Upheld

Facts: A coalition concerned with lead poisoning sued the city, claiming that the City Council adopted Local Law 38 of 1999 without doing proper environmental impact reviews. Local Law 38 replaced prior total lead-paint abatement requirements with monitoring and containment requirements. The coalition claimed that Local Law 38 increased public health risks by changing landlord's responsibility from total removal to visual inspection and containment of peeling paint, increasing the amount of lead allowable in paint, decreasing the upper age of a child from 6 to 5, and changing the definition of a hazardous condition from all existing lead-based paint to peeling lead-based paint. The court ruled that Local Law 38 of 1999 was null and void because the city passed it without first conducting state-required environmental impact reviews. The city appealed. Courts: The city wins. The City Council did conduct an environmental assessment before passing Local Law 38. And total abatement of lead paint, required under the prior law, had proved over 20 years to be, itself, a health hazard because it exposed otherwise contained conditions.

NYC Coalition to End Lead Poisoning, Inc. v. Vallone: NYLJ, 3/28/02, p. 17, col. 3 (App. Div.1 Dept.; Tom, JP, Andrias, Saxe, Buckley, Lerner, JJ)