Harry Jaffe, The Examiner
2007-08-17 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

Sometimes, as my fishing buddy and poker pal Orin Levine says, the fish jump right in the boat. Such is the case of the D.C. government’s new crusade to solve the long-standing problem of childhood lead poisoning, which was unveiled Thursday with much fanfare at 1 p.m. in front of One Judiciary Square.

This “battle” is a gift for anyone interested in evaluating whether Adrian Fenty’s government can walk and chew gum at the same time.

» Fact one: Lead has had a disastrous effect on young minds in D.C. for decades.

» Fact two: Funds and programs have been available to cities to identify kids hurt by lead, find homes where lead paint presents a hazard, and force landlords to clean up their buildings.

» Fact three: D.C. governments have failed to do anything about lead poisoning, even as Baltimore and other cities have made great progress.

Here’s why this presents a perfect test case for Fenty’s new crew: Lead poisoning can be fixed, but it will take cooperation and coordination of four government agencies: the departments of health, environment and housing and the Office of Attorney General.

“A child a day in the District is poisoned by lead,” Attorney General Linda Singer tells me, “and there’s no coming back from it. They never get better. And it’s totally fixable.”

If the government can function.

“We’re looking at system coordination,” Singer says. “The trick here is going to be changing the whole game.”

As in the old game of passing the blame for inaction from agency to agency. Call it the D.C. shuffle.

John Pekkanen, my colleague at Washingtonian magazine, defined the “game” in a groundbreaking article last August and in a follow-up in the current issue. Citing medical reports and case studies, Pekkanen described the horrible effects of lead on a child’s brain, from curbing intelligence to engendering violent tendencies. He also exposed the city’s abject failures at fixing the problem.

Thousands of D.C. residents, many of them poor, live in apartments built before the 1950s when lead paint was in common use. When toddlers eat the paint chips, their brains are forever damaged.

Pekkanen recommended Fenty appoint a “lead czar.” That person is George Hawkins, director of the environmental agency.

There’s already some good news. A few enterprising health officials have teamed with activists to start teaching a course at the University of the District of Columbia to train lead paint inspectors. More on that in my next column.

For now, city agencies are embarking on a critical crusade to stop lead from poisoning our children, whether it’s from paint chips or school water fountains. Health officials will have to test kids and report findings to the environmental agency, which will pass on findings to the housing department, which will cite landlords for violations. Singer’s lawyers will bring the hammer down on any recalcitrant landlords.

It’s a lofty but worthy goal. Now we can watch to make sure Fenty’s folks can achieve it.

Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.