Ohio School Buildings Under Inspection For Asbestos

An abandoned school building in Chillicothe, Ohio, is up for sale after the town's board of education voted to allow administrators to find a buyer. The building had previously undergone asbestos evaluations that had held up the sale of the former site of McArthur Elementary School in Chillicothe, a small town forty-five miles south of the state capital in Columbus.

The school board also voted to let city officials carry out an appraisal of other environmental impact factors at the old site. A local firm, Pandey Environmental LLC, finished an asbestos evaluation on another school site, Smith Middle School, recently and is expected to do the same work at the McArthur site.

The principal partner at Pandey Environmental, Atul Pandey, said that he estimated the costs for full asbestos abatement at the Smith site could run well over the quarter-million dollar mark. The work would include removing and disposing of ceiling tiles, floor tiles, wall plaster and plumbing insulation.

When school board members expressed concerns about the costs of environmental assessments at both the Smith and McArthur sites, Mr. Pandey suggested that the school district apply for financial aid through the EPA‘s "Brownfield" program. The agency offers grants and revolving low-interest loans to state and local government agencies to cover the costs of environmental impact assessments and cleanup efforts for properties that have suffered from contamination by toxic substances such as asbestos, so long as the organization applying for funds was not the same one responsible for the original pollution.

Mr. Pandey stated his optimism that the district would receive the funds needed to cover the environmental impact studies needed to insure that both buildings would be available for sale. He said that the purpose behind most Brownfield grants was to "take the stigma away" from older, contaminated sites and prepare them for redevelopment and repurposing. If the EPA approves the district's application, the Chillicothe school board could get up to two hundred thousand dollars in grant funds, with the rest of the monies coming from loans with interest rates between one-half and three percent.

Crews at Pandey Environmental have recently completed an asbestos assessment at the Smith site, but have not yet started work on removing any of the affected areas in the building. They are currently waiting for the go-ahead to inspect the McArthur site, which is also believed to have serious asbestos contamination. Workers also completed a "Phase I" environmental assessment of the former middle school, which included finding mercury in the floorboards of the school gymnasium and leakage in the storage bin used to hold coal, which school workers burned to heat the facility in the winter.

As school board members wait on both the Phase II report and the verdict on the loan application, they are also soliciting opinions from local residents as to what they would like to see done with the Smith site. A quick decision on the site would be the easiest and the most beneficial, according to school board president Steve Mullins. Vice President Matt Markley expressed his hope that any parties interested in maintaining the sites would make known their intentions.

Source: Chillicothe Gazette

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