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Middle schools' fate in hands of council, school board |
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Thursday, 29 November 2007 |
By JOSEPH B. NADEAU
WOONSOCKET — The testing has been completed and now it will be up to the City Council and School Committee to decide whether two new middle schools should be built off Hamlet Avenue and Florence Drive as was initially proposed.
The panels will meet in joint session next week to hear a presentation on the costs of cleaning up hazardous materials at the site and will also be asked to consider obtaining additional funding for the $74 million project from outside sources, Joel D. Mathews, director of planning and development, said Thursday.
Woonsocket has been working with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management to assess the extent of industrial contamination at the long time city mill property and determine what level of clean up would be needed to use the site for schools, according to Mathews.
"These discussions are ongoing, but at this point it looks like the costs are going to exceed the budget that we have," Mathews said.
The school department had originally sought $80 million as a total budget for the schools but saw that reduced to $74 million when it was considered by the General Assembly for enabling legislation, Mathews noted.
City voters approved building the schools with $74 million in bonding in a landslide decision on August 14.
The approval came after a campaign highlighted the cost-saving merits of building two 800-student middle schools on the 20-acres of industrial land off Hamlet and along the bordering Blackstone River.
The plans included demolition of several remaining mill buildings at the one-time, textile manufacturing complex and clean up of parcels left vacant after two large mill fires there in recent year.
A crane has remained parked next to remaining building owned by ACS Industries at the location while the city negotiated acquisition of those structures with the the company and continued ground testing throughout the properties this fall.
The final round of testing, 100 additional borings and test pits completed beyond an initial round of 57, found no new contaminates at the site but did track materials already found as more widely dispersed than initially expected, according to Mathews.
The contaminates detected include a heavy No. 6 fuel oil and an organic chemical solvent commonly used for degreasing and clean in industrial processes, he said.
"Both of those will have to be addressed by the clean up, either removed to a certain extend or capped," he said.
The extent of the materials' distribution at the site and DEM's requirements for making the property safe for school and residential use will likely push the clean-up costs beyond the amount of money already designed for site preparation in the bonding, Mathews said.
The bond project had listed $4 million for site preparation at the Hamlet Avenue site and the work now under discussion with the DEM would require a sum "significantly more than that," Mathews said.
That projection opens the door to several options for moving the project forward, according to Mathews.
The building committee, which will be considering the problem when it meets on Wednesday, could recommend seeking outside federal and state funding to cover added costs under the origin site plan.
It could also recommend a shift to one of the plan's alternative locations for the schools, the city-owed Barry Field athletic complex off Smithfield Road at the Woonsocket-North Smithfield townline, or another vacant mill located near the Woonsocket Area Career and Technical Center off Aylsworth Avenue.
A key factor in any change, however, would be the impact on the construction schedule for the schools and need to have the buildings in use by 2010 in order to recoup the state's nearly 80 percent construction reimbursements as funding for the city's bonding costs.
Barry Field, which has always been open space in the city, could be used without additional site development costs but any other city site would likely require a new round of testing and study beyond what has already paid for at Hamlet Avenue, he noted.
It will be up to the Council and School Committee to decide what course should be followed as a next step, but Mathews said quick action will be needed on any decision in order to keep the school project on track for its required completion date.
The Planning Department was still working on the costs of the clean-up work this week but should have a package ready for consideration by the Council and School Committee next week, he said.
The panels would then be asked on act on the alternatives at meetings of each board on December 10, Mathews said.
City Council President Leo T. Fontaine could not be reached about the site concerns Thursday, but School Committee Chairman Marc Dubois said he was aware the requested meetings had been scheduled.
"I'm concerned obviously, but we don't have a lot information at this point," Dubois said.
The committee member said he would await the Planning Department's presentation before considering the next course of action for the schools.
"There is concern about what will the clean up will cost but also about how long it will take because it all has be done in time to qualify for the state reimbursements," Dubois said.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 05 December 2007 )
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