By Eden Laikin
Newsday (New York)
LEVITTOWN, NY — Island Trees High School, considered a hazardous waste site by state and federal environmental officials, has not submitted an emergency response plan in case the waste escapes into the air or water, though the state ordered the district to submit one four years ago, officials said.
The hazardous waste stems from lead fragments contained in sand moved from a shuttered rifle range and dumped in tunnels that house the high school ventilation system.
The district now has 30 days to come up with an emergency plan. Among other things, the plan should name staff to lead a response and coordinate with local police and fire agencies, under an order issued Oct. 23 by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The DEC’s action mirrors an order it issued the district in November 2004, but the agency now says some of the work was not done. Last night, the school board voted unanimously to hire an environmental firm to help address the DEC’s mandate. The law firm Twomey, Latham, Shea, Kelley, Dubin & Quartararo was hired at $275 per hour.
The board also voted to form a committee of board members and residents to investigate who is responsible for the initial lead contamination.
Missing from the latest order by the DEC, however, is a timetable for the district to conduct a final cleanup of remaining lead-contaminated sand in the Levittown school.
In August 2006, the district removed much of the sand and did a cleanup. But state health officials this year said the district failed to take proper measures to seal off the tunnel or remove all the contaminated soil - causing re-contamination in areas outside the tunnel.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Education advised the district on Oct. 24 to encapsulate the remaining sand in concrete and said the agency would help fund the project.
The agency prefers that approach instead of removing the sand, a process it said “could pose greater risks than encapsulation by potentially creating airborne contaminated dust, exposing building occupants and necessitating additional cleaning of facilities,” a spokesman said in an e-mail yesterday.
In 2005, the DEC opposed the encapsulation approach, saying it was “at best a temporary remedy” and would eventually cost more money.
But DEC spokesman Bill Fonda said the agency won’t take a position on the best cleanup alternative until it reviews the district’s proposal.
In the Oct. 23 letter to district Superintendent James Parla, DEC official Katy Murphy wrote that “a notice of violation letter dated Nov. 29, 2004, was sent to you identifying violations of the New York State hazardous waste regulations. ... A number of those items might remain outstanding.”
In an interview, Fonda confirmed that the district had not corrected some violations.
In an Oct. 24 e-mail to Parla, Carl Thurnau, director of facilities for the state education department, wrote that he believes the contaminated soil remaining in the tunnels after a 2006 cleaning was deposited there before 1980. That may mean it would not have to be removed because that was the year hazardous waste regulations were adopted, the e-mail said.
Because of the lead, the Island Trees school district has been listed since July 2006 on the Web site of the federal Environmental Protection Agency as a “large quantity generator” or a hazardous waste handler.