Sometimes I get dismayed at what the university of cincinnati (along with cincinnati children’s hospital) finds acceptable.  Just one parking lot away from the department of environmental health, where government has funded the removal of lead and asbestos in an effort to make the city a safer place to live, are two giant yellow excavators pulling down 100 year old neighboring houses (not that i am bemoaning the loss of less well kept property) unquestionably filled with lead paint, asbestos, mold and piles of trash billowing up dust clouds that would signal that much is airborne that should NOT be airborne. So cincinnati children’s is (has/continues) expanding into a very old neighborhood adjacent to it) but doing it in a way that is environmentally reckless (in my opinion).

I have met and talked to residents in those homes…  I remember one in particular at the south-east corner of burnet and erkenbrecher  who was a long last holdout before he sold to children’s hospital.  I have spoken with the owners of two of the very lovely old brick victorian houses on erkenbrecher, one a professor here, and i wonder whether greed will overtake historical value for them as well.

two issues here: 1) environmental health is important — and it is the biggest department at the university of cincinnati BUT why can its neighbor (also part of UC) disregard the information, persuasion, good policy of its back-door neighbor and pollute the environment of its own “house” so to speak.  I dont get it. Doesnt the right hand know what the left hand is doing. 2) second issue is just preservation of history.