The Manhattan Times

DOE comments on possible pollution at two Inwood schools; testing underway

by Adam Garrett-Clark

The soil under two schools that share a building on W. 219th Street and 9th Avenue is safe, according to a statement released by the city’s Department of Education last week. Testing of the air quality in the building has already begun due to requests from both M.S. 278 principal Maureen Guido and the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), after the agency recently learned that the site is a schoolhouse for 882 elementary and middle school children between M.S. 278 and P.S. 18.

According to the M.S. 278 Parent Teacher Association, a DOE environmental testing contractor was sent Fri., Nov. 6 to test the air in the building.

News of a potential gas spill at the site of the two schools 10 years ago was discovered in September when Dawn Philip of the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest issued a series of Freedom of Information requests while investigating the environmental review process that originally sited the school building in an industrial area.

Exact details of the data related to the environmental assessment of the school will be revealed when the current FOIA request Philip has filed with the DOE is returned. As of press time it is nearly two weeks late.

The DOE doesn’t dispute that the location was once contaminated, but says it is now safe. In a statement released last week which was mirrored in a letter sent from principal Guido to parents Friday afternoon, School Construction Authority spokesperson Will Havemann wrote: “Before we opened the building, contaminated soil was removed from the site, new soil was put in its place, and a vapor barrier was installed under the new portion of the building.”

According to Havemann, air tests in the building prior to the opening of P.S. 18 in 1993 were conducted and indicated that the building was safe. Those tests were repeated throughout the 1990s with the same result, he said.

Karen Jolicoeur, of the M.S. 278 PTA, said parents who were unaware of the situation had reacted strongly to an article about the possible pollution in the Nov. 4 edition of Manhattan Times. But, she added, the parents association had been informed about the issue by the school and was satisfied with how the school and DOE have addressed the issue.

Havemann said the DOE expects the current round of tests to confirm previous findings.

The DEC has known about the spill for years, but never made onsite tests because it did not know a school occupied the building.

According to DEC spokesperson Thomas Panzone, the agency learned of the schools through Philip’s inquiry in September. If it had known about the schools, said Panzone, it would have investigated more aggressively as it is doing now.

One reason the site was never red flagged by the DEC is because the DOE leases the land rather than owning it. The news is fodder for critics of the DOE who argue that school buildings that are leased undergo less stringent environmental and community review than buildings purchased by the agency.