Board responds to editorial on school site

We are writing this letter in response to the editorial titled "U.F. Should err on side of caution for the kids," which appeared in the June 1 Examiner. The letter contains several inaccuracies and misrepresentations that we feel do more to frighten than to inform. The members of the Upper Freehold Regional Board of Education hold the safety of our children as paramount. The board has spent countless hours on the topic of the new middle school construction and remediating the property.

While the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) would have allowed the board to remediate the property to the nonresidential level, the board wanted to allay public concerns and remediate to the stricter residential standards.The board has completed five phases of soil investigation. The board has reviewed and discussed countless pages of technical analyses, listened to presentations and sought counsel and advice from professionals and community members. In March 2006, the board proceeded with a remediation plan that would move the soils impacted with dieldrin and arsenic, in accordance with DEP Residential Soil Cleanup Criteria, using excavation, consolidation in two burial areas, and capping with clean soil.

DEP recognizes capping as a safe and reliable remedial option, though they only require the contaminated soil to be covered with 1 foot of clean soil. The district will take additional steps by requiring that the contaminated soil be capped with 2 feet of clean soil. Asphalt pavement will also provide an additional cap over the buried soils. The DEP would have allowed the school district to place the contaminated soil underneath the school, but the district chose to place it under the parking lot.. This type of remediation plan requires the property to be deed-restricted.

The plan to cap the soil has received approvals from the DEP and the Monmouth County Board of Health and has been reviewed and approved by the Upper Freehold Township's representative on the Board of Health. Removing the soil was also explored, but ruled out as trucking approximately 44,000 cubic yards of the contaminated soil, about 3,000 truckloads up and down Ellisdale Road, also poses safety and liability risks.

The Examiner's use of the situation at North Brunswick High School as a comparable to the UFR Middle School situation is entirely inappropriate. In that instance, the DEP found arsenic, beryllium and cadmium at elevated levels in soil samples that were taken as they were expanding the school. Beryllium and cadmium are not historic pesticides, like dieldrin. They are toxic metals. The primary exposure route for beryllium and cadmium is inhalation. The primary exposure route for dieldrin is long-term ingestion.

The Examiner also cited an expert from Boston University's School of Public Health regarding gases migrating from under the building and penetrating indoor space and groundwater. Again, this is an unfortunate and inappropriate example. According to Paul Lioy, Ph.D., professor and vice chair, Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and director of the Exposure Science Division of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute at Rutgers University, dieldrin does not act in this manner. It binds to soil and does not form a gas. It cannot percolate upward, through the soil and parking lot, to become airborne. It is a compound that must be eaten, over prolonged periods of time, to be a health risk.

The health risks posed to people who eat dieldrin are indeed serious; however, they would only be of concern to one willing to jackhammer through 9 inches of asphalt, dig through two feet of dirt, then eat fistfuls of the contaminated soil every day for 70 years. Common sense suggests our children are at much greater risk of being harmed by ingesting a common household cleaning product.

The Board of Education will hold a special presentation of our remediation plan on June 28 at 7 p.m. Members of the community will have an opportunity to get the facts. We believe that once the community examines all of the specifics about the board's plan, you will see that the board has indeed erred on the side of caution for the kids.

Joe Stampe

president

Lisa Herzer

vice president

Upper Freehold Township Board of Education