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9486 in the collection
St. Paul Street school site owner seeks brownfield status, tax credits
Irony: One of the features of School 33 is a "School-Based Health Center (ViaHealth and Rochester General Hospital) which offers health care services to students right at school." We can hope these services moved with the 1,000 students to this toxic site.
School 33 operates a Saturday school, giving students extra toxic exposure.
NOTE: The original charter school, Charter School Of Science & Technology, occupied six and a half floors of a former Bausch & Lomb lens factory on this site, was started by Edison. The school didn't make it past its five year evaluation and was shuttered as was Edison's Stepping Stone Academy, in Buffalo. The latter was located across one of the worst toxic lead dumps in the state. The New York Times wrote the administrator donned a gas mask over his ministerial robes to pull weeds from the abandoned lot. That site has also been part of the "toxic tour" of contaminated dumps in Western New York.
Where's the state dept of ed/health in protecting schoolkids, charter as well as public?
Steve Orr and David Andreatta
The owner of a former [Rochester, NY] city factory that housed two schools in recent years — and will host a third this fall — has asked the state to declare the site a brownfield and provide tax credits to clean it.
Financial assistance for the environmental cleanup could further a proposed $40 million redevelopment of the St. Paul Street complex that could also include offices for up to 800 Monroe County government workers and emergency housing for several hundred low-income people, according to the brownfield application.
Environmental tests of the former Bausch & Lomb buildings at 690 St. Paul St. conducted last summer, before the Rochester School District moved 1,000 students from School 33 to the site in September, revealed traces of trichloroethene, or TCE, in the air, soil and groundwater.
Workers stumbled on contaminated soil seven years ago, but cleanup didn't begin until late last summer.
School district and state health officials say the results indicated no immediate safety concerns, although a ventilation system was installed to mitigate vapors and the indoor air has been monitored since September.
All but one of the indoor air samples collected in the school last fall and early winter proved to be below the state guideline for TCE, according to a summary provided to the Democrat and Chronicle. TCE is a toxic industrial solvent and a probable human carcinogen.
State health officials, noting that TCE levels in the school remain "slightly higher than what we would expect," are recommending further study once school lets out for the summer. The school district informed parents and staff via letters mailed to their homes.
The current concerns follow numerous complaints to county agencies of respiratory irritation, headaches and foul smells over the years from workers at the now-defunct School of Science & Technology, a charter school that occupied the location from 2000 to 2005, according to documents filed with the brownfield application.
In November 2004, for instance, the school was evacuated because of a strong sewer odor. The following month, sewer odors surfaced again and the county was informed that "kids are starting to vomit." County workers who responded reported a "heavy odor of paint thinner," according to the application.
The documents show that county health inspectors were called to the school in 2003 and found high levels of carbon dioxide in the air, citing poor air flow as a possible cause.
The school district last year signed a 15-year lease on the space and relocated School 33 there until renovations at its Webster Avenue home were complete. A new public elementary school, the Dr. Walter Cooper Academy, is slated to open at the St. Paul Street site in September.
"Test results continue to indicate that the building and grounds at 690 St. Paul St. do not represent an exposure concern, and our parents and staff are aware of this," said Rochester School District spokesman Tom Petronio, adding that efforts under way to ensure the safety of students and staff would continue.
The complex, just north of downtown Rochester, was built almost 90 years ago by Bausch & Lomb, which made lenses and other optical items there. Sold by the company in the late 1960s, the complex now is owned by Genesee Valley Real Estate Co., a firm run by Rochester lawyer Dante Gullace and his family.
Included are an interconnected group of buildings on the east side of St. Paul and one on the west side. The contamination concerns involve the eastern part of the complex.
Gullace did not return a phone message left at his office.
In its brownfield application, Genesee Valley Real Estate outlined plans to renovate portions of the eastern complex not used by the school district, turning them into offices and emergency housing for the poor. The company also would build a parking garage and a pedestrian bridge over St. Paul Street.
The application does not name the tenant, but county spokesman Noah Lebowitz said last week that the county is the possible lessee in question.
Plans for county offices and county-subsidized housing for the poor would compound an already considerable investment in the complex from the county.
Monroe County now pays $1.4 million annually to lease 177,000 square feet for more than 500 health and human service workers based in the six-story building on the west side of St. Paul. In 1996, the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency, or COMIDA, arranged for $4 million in tax-exempt bonds for renovation of the complex.
Lebowitz said the county has had only "very preliminary" talks with Genesee Valley Real Estate about leasing space in the eastern part of the complex. "We would only decide to move personnel and/or services there if it both increased the efficiency of our service delivery and saved taxpayer dollars," he said.
Additional human service and health employees, now stationed in a county-owned high-rise building on Westfall Road, would be among candidates to move to St. Paul, he said.
The emergency housing, if built, would service social-services clients, including families, in need of temporary shelter, Lebowitz said. The county now houses many such clients at the Cadillac Hotel in downtown Rochester. It placed nearly 2,000 clients there last year for varying lengths of time.
Before any redevelopment begins, however, the company must contend with contaminants apparently left behind by former manufacturing processes.
Solvent contamination first came to light in 2002, when contractors dug up an old storage tank and found chemicals had leaked into the soil. Officials at the state Department of Environmental Conservation said the soil was left in place so Genesee Valley could submit a cleanup plan.
"As far as we know, it was never submitted," said Bart Putzig, head of hazardous waste remediation for the DEC regional office in Avon. DEC didn't hear from the company until late last summer when workers were preparing to build a playground near the area where the contaminated soil was buried.
When they dug it up, they found that TCE and other solvents had spread through a much wider area of soil. About 75 tons of tainted soil containing traces of TCE and petroleum products were removed under DEC supervision just as School 33 began classes last fall. Test wells found groundwater under the site also was contaminated.
Indoor air testing and precautionary installation of a sub-basement air system to guard against chemical vapors began at the same time.
If the DEC accepts the site into the brownfield program, the owner intends to conduct further soil and groundwater studies and investigate parts of the complex where hazardous materials may have been used.
One material of interest is thorium, a radioactive metal that was used as a lens additive. The brownfield application states that the property owner removed radioactive thorium from the complex about 10 years ago, and the plan includes monitoring for the presence of thorium dust.
State health and environmental officials said they had no knowledge of any thorium removal from the site, and DEC officials said they have no reason to believe any thorium remains in the complex.
Most of these assessments would be done this summer. Further cleanup work, if any were needed, would begin next spring, according to a schedule in the application.
— Steve Orr and David Andreatta
Democrat & Chronicle
2009-05-26
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200905260300/NEWS01/905260331
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