New federal law will affect thousands of Fort Lauderdale homes

Renovations of any kind to most buildings in Fort Lauderdale are expected to go up in the wake of a new federal law, the Renovation, Repair and Painting law, which is intended to protect children from the damaging effects of toxic lead.

Lead poisoning damages the processes of the central nervous system, thereby making children more vulnerable to its effects than adults as their development can be derailed, causing learning difficulties and behavior problems.

The most common cause of lead poisoning in the US is through lead-laden dust from pre-1978 paint. The use of lead in paint on homes was banned in 1978 when research found this to be the cause of hundreds of cases of brain damage across the country. In 2008, 278 children tested positive in Florida for having unacceptably high levels of lead in their systems.

The new law went into effect nationwide on April 22^nd and applied to all houses built before 1978, when lead was a common component in paint. The law mandates that contracts brought in to do renovations or repairs must test their work areas inside and outside for presence of lead, if lead is present extensive steps must be taken to prepare the area for the work to be done and they must leave the area entirely clean when they finish.

This is the first law of its kind that has been applied to private homes. The US Environmental Protection agency drafted the law and has warned that although some home owners may ask contracts if they can skip the additional precautions, if they do, the penalties will be severe, over $30,000 for each violation.

Thousands of renovation projects on homes in Fort Lauderdale will be impacted as many of the city’s homes, perhaps as much as a quarter, were built before 1978.

The effects are thus: a homeowner who wants to have their pre-1978 built house renovated must be given a “Renovation Right” pamphlet by the renovators; he or she must sign for this as proof that they received it before work begins. The workers must be able to prove that they are certified to do the lead-related work through EPA-approved training that they received every five years.

The exact nature of how this might affect the time it takes to carry out renovations, or the additional cost that will be incurred, are not yet known, but some contractors have told Fort Lauderdale news media they expect their prices might need to go up by as much as 20%.

The EPA has estimated that costs will increase by $8 to $167 per job, while many contractors, such as Seagull CEO Jim Stump, expect that the increased costs will be steep at first, but will taper out as the new measures become commonplace and the procedure become more streamlined. This is especially in relation to the strict lead tests that will need to be carried out.

Stump runs one of five EPA-approved training facilities in Florida and says that he’s already trained over 5000 people involved in renovation and repair.

There hasn’t been quite the rush that the EPA and many contractors had expected though, leading some to wonder if renovation companies may simply change the way they do business.

Here in South Florida for example, where many of the homes are newer than in the rest of the state, contractors may simply stop working on pre-1978 houses in order to bypass the extra expense and time during a recession.