A field behind Morristown’s Alexander Hamilton School, closed since last summer, will stay that way for at least another school year as the Morris School District seeks state permits to remove or cap contaminated soil, officials told parents on Thursday.
The cleanup is expected to cost about $1.5 million.
Officials aim to redesign and reopen a playground behind the school in September. But the grass field that extends from the playground will take longer.
So, come this fall, the school will deploy special police officers and crossing guards to halt traffic on Mills Street, enabling elementary schoolers to cross safely to a Morristown High School field, for about 20 minutes of daily playtime.
at the Alexander Hamilton School, May 5, 2022. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Interim Superintendent Thomas Ficarra said he reached out to Mayor Tim Dougherty and town police for this crossing permission, something the District has sought for years.
“We got a yes this time. We assured them it was temporary, an emergency situation,” Ficarra said.
He only learned last month, he said, that a lengthy and extensive cleanup of the field is needed to satisfy state environmental officials.
“When we learned this came out, we panicked last week when we had to tell you this will go another year,” said Ficarra.
Some parents at the sparsely attended briefing in the school auditorium said the District’s last message about the situation was back in September.
“It just seems like a huge gap in communications,” said Soumen Chowdhury, parent of a 3rd grader. He thanked Ficarra for Thursday’s presentation.
“My daughter says she doesn’t want to play on blacktop anymore,” said Mark Curto, parent of a 4th grader.
“I think they should have been a little more transparent,” said Jamie Holloway, parent of a 5th grader. She expressed excitement that “things are starting to move forward.”
Alexander Hamilton has 321 pupils in grades 3-5, according to Principal Ed Cisneros.
PANDEMIC PERMIT BLUES
Children are protected from any harmful exposure by the school’s concrete floors, and by closure of outdoor play areas, Ficarra said.
Two types of contaminants require remediation.
Benzo(a)pyrene is common in air, sediment, soil and water, and comes from incomplete burns of wood, coal, tobacco, oil and gas products, and charred or grilled food, according to District Business Administrator Anthony LoFranco.
“Historic Fill” can include deposits of construction- or demolition debris, coal- or fly ash, or nonhazardous solid waste. These buried materials predate the school, which is about a century old, Ficarro said.
Attempting to allay parents’ concerns last September, the prior superintendent told parents their kids “would have to ingest the soil or have direct skin contact with the soil for 18 hours a day for 350 days out of the year to be at risk.”
Out of an abundance of caution, however, the District now must deal with this soil, said Ficarra. He became interim in November, after an earlier 12-year stint as superintendent.
Options include removing the top two feet, or layering two feet of clean soil above it, or capping it with artificial turf.
The grassy field will take longer to reopen than the playground because it’s closer to a stream, and therefore requires permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Ficarra said.
Those permits are slowed because the pandemic has thinned the DEP staff, creating a backlog for those who remain, District consultant Tom Pruno of Environmental Design Inc. (EDI) told parents via a Zoom link.
CANCER CLUSTER CONCERNS
Faculty concerns about a cancer cluster at Alexander Hamilton spurred environmental investigations in the 2019-2020 school year. Twenty cancer cases over a dozen years were “most likely a chance occurrence,” concluded the state Health Department.
Additional tests by EDI in August and September 2020 detected chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, including Benzo(a)pyrene, which exceeded state standards in a soil sample in the rear field, and also in a sediment sample near the stream.
From December 2021 through this March, more tests detected historic fill in 11 samples from all around the school, including the playground and paved and unpaved areas in the front of the building.
EDI advised the District last month that tainted soil must go, per DEP guidelines.
The District will insist that contractors work around students’ schedules, performing remediation after school hours, on evenings, weekends and holidays, Ficarra said.
That prompted a neighbor to remind the interim superintendent that residents deserve some peace and quiet during those periods.
A neighbor also inquired if Benzo(a)pyrene will contaminate her vegetable garden. If vegetables grow normally and taste good, they should be safe to consume, Pruno said. If they don’t grow, tests should be conducted.
“Children are protected from any harmful exposure by the school’s concrete floors, and by closure of outdoor play areas, Ficarra said.”
Hmm..that’s great. My kids played there many years ago before the closure and didn’t even know until now that the soil was toxic back there!!! Great to know my kids played in toxic soil. Good grief.
Why are we only hearing of this now if they have been trying to get town/police approval to cross the street for recess for years in order to deal with this issue? Anyone who has ever been a Morris School District parent or anyone in the community who has ever attended a MSD Board of Education meeting knows that past and current interim superintendent Ficarra and last superintendent Pendergrast both have/had deny and cover up down to a science and the Board of Education is nothing more than a self-congratulating clique of incompetent individuals who do nothing more that kiss the tail of the superintendents and pat each other on the back for all that they falsely believe they are doing for our students. We have a high school that is embarrassingly behind of most high schools in the state and nation, liberal school administration and teaching staff who do nothing more that coddle non-performing demographics at the expense of our brightest students, and the Morris School District overall is failing our town, students, and families. We need a real superintendent that will actually resurrect the reputation of the district schools and we need to replace every member of the Board of Education and dare I say most principals in the district.
The district could be telling us the truth but they totally lost my trust in August of 2020. I’m sure they are lying through their teeth.
The remediation process and approvals won’t get taken seriously until the teachers unions get ahold of it; then watch how fast the permits get approved.
Remember it doesn’t matter how the kids are affected until it impacts NJEA members.
The only reason this issue is finally receiving attention is because parents were frustrated by the lack of attention to the matter, and planned to address it a BOE meeting. This is just another obvious case of the problem with our district. Administration complacency and lack of communication. Nothing but excuses from the top down about the lack of solutions to a problem that could have had a Plan B MONTHS ago. The district’s “go-to” response is to blame problems on COVID, when the problems ultimately always rest with the district’s inability to communicate ANYTHING with parents, and the excuses for administration inaction or lack of collaboration with parents.