GARFIELD -- As students walked into the new Garfield Middle School building on Lanza Avenue on their first day of school, chemical vapors found in June were being extracted from under the property.
A noxious plume of trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, which had evaporated from groundwater 15 feet below the ground's surface, was detected by environmental engineers in soil between the school and Fleischer Brook, which runs along the western side of the site.
State and local officials said they believed the chemicals were left behind by Cameo Cleaners, a dry cleaner that was part of the strip mall demolished in 2004 to make way for the school for 1,200 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students.
Parents weren't notified of the pollution on the site until the district sent letters dated Aug. 10 -- weeks before school started. Days later, state and local school district officials held a meeting with parents at which they told them about the soil vapor remediation system in place and that the 178,000-square foot building, which took three years and $37.4 million to build, was safe for staff and students to occupy.
Three to four more tests will be conducted in the upcoming year, but there's no guarantee that the building will continue to get a clean bill of health.
Officials at government environmental agencies concede that soil vapor intrusion -- when soil vapors pollute a building's indoor air, usually by seeping into cracks in the foundation -- is a comparatively new field they are just beginning to understand. Critics and environmental watchdogs say a variety of factors can influence where the soil vapors travel.
Critics also say the state Department of Environmental Protection lacks tough regulations and enforcement power to protect the public against soil vapor intrusion dangers.
They complain that the current system places a higher priority on facilitating redevelopment than on worrying about public health -- even when it comes to school projects.
Bill Wolfe, a former DEP employee who now leads New Jersey's chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, questioned the timing of the Garfield Middle School soil vapor test. The DEP released its 158-page report on soil vapor intrusion recommendations in October 2005.
Why wasn't a test conducted until June 29, Wolfe asked?
"It's a major snafu," Wolfe said. "It exposed a fatal flaw in the design of the program that the DEP knows about and does not fix."
Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club's New Jersey chapter, was also critical of the state's lack of soil vapor policy.
"New Jersey has no real vapor intrusion program," Tittel said. "The system is broken."
What is soil vapor?
Larry Hajna, spokesman for the DEP, called soil vapor intrusion "an emerging science."
"It's been within the past several years that the importance, in terms of its relative health risk, has really become an issue," Hajna said. "In context, New Jersey is certainly at the forefront."
Chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, which include TCE and PCE, in groundwater can volatilize or evaporate. The released vapors inhabit the spaces between soil particles in the ground.
The white pipes seen sticking about 3 feet out of the ground on Garfield Middle School's western side are part of the soil vapor remediation in progress, Hajna said.
The system is designed to draw the vapors out of the ground into a carbon filtration unit that removes the contaminants before they get into the atmosphere, he said. DEP officials project that the soil vapors will be cleared within a year.
However, a variety of factors -- including climate and the soil's composition -- can influence how and where the vapors travel, according to Daniel Gimenez, a soil physicist at Rutgers University's Department of Environmental Sciences.
"It is reasonable to assume you will find the contaminant closer to the surface when the groundwater table is closer to the surface, which is typically during the spring," Gimenez said.
Not only does the spring thaw bring more water into the soil, but even in mild winters, there is also less vegetation to absorb water, contributing to a rise in the groundwater table, he said.
David Vaccari, director of Stevens Institute of Technology's Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering Department, said time of year isn't necessarily a predictor of when groundwater tables rise. Summer rainfalls could just as easily affect groundwater levels.
Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, running tests for the N.J. Schools Construction Corp., concluded the property's soil and groundwater contained volatile organic compounds -- including TCE and PCE -- in a report dated July 17, 2003, long before construction began on the Garfield school.
Vaccari said that it was "reasonable" to examine only the soil and groundwater at first.
But the fact that vapors of TCE and PCE were found in June -- after all the tainted soil was believed to have been removed from the site -- "might give people pause."
"You can't probe every square foot," Vaccari said. "There's always going to be a risk that you follow the rules and you missed something."
No rules, only guidance
The DEP's soil vapor intrusion guidance, adopted in October 2005, includes recommendations of what property owners should to do when particular chemicals reach certain levels of contamination in indoor air.
But Tittel of the Sierra Club said unless the DEP gets increased enforcement power by providing regulations, the guidance is academic.
"It's a voluntary cleanup program in New Jersey," Tittel said. "The responsible party gets to pick the remedy. Overall, the DEP doesn't have the leverage to make you do what's right. That's the big thing that has to change."
Hajna disavowed the assertion.
"We are very forceful in telling the owner that we want the soil vapor guidance to be implemented," he said.
But when asked what the DEP could do in the case of a property owner who resisted the guidance, Hajna said, "There's a fair concern there."
Land now, cleanup later
Lenny Siegel of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif., said that the competition among New Jersey school districts for school building funding is a contributing factor for environmental issues getting short shrift.
"They have to go and choose a site as early as they can to get in line for state money," said Siegel, who reviewed a draft of New Jersey's soil vapor guidance in July 2005.
"There's this rush to overlook potential environmental problems to the point that all you can do is mitigate," he said. "You pick the site, and you worry about the environmental issues later."
Ronald Carper, the SDA's assistant director of real estate and environmental services, said the Garfield School District chose the Lanza Avenue site for a middle school in 2000.
Garfield Schools Superintendent Nicholas L. Perrapato did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
In September 2003, while the Garfield Middle School project was in its early phases, the DEP and the SDA's predecessor, the Schools Construction Corp. made an agreement to expedite environmental reviews of hundreds of proposed school sites throughout the state.
In April 2005, N.J. Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper reported in her initial review of the SCC that schools districts often selected sites that were "patently unsuitable for schools," many times because the properties were "environmentally contaminated."
Gov. Jon S. Corzine's establishment of the Schools Development Authority on Aug. 6 was aimed at reforming the state's school building practices, but Wolfe said that without tough regulations, the emphasis on speedy completion will remain the priority in school construction projects.
Schools on tainted sites
In an Aug. 24 interview, Perrapato said he was confident that the school was "all set to go," citing two tests in July of the school's indoor air that detected no contamination. Nevertheless, parents wondered why a contaminated site was chosen in the first place.
Even environmental activists, including Siegel, acknowledge that in many cases, particularly in New Jersey where land is at a premium, some school districts may have no alternative but to build on a site that has some contamination. But in those cases, they urge for complete remediation before the school is opened.
When Tittel was asked if he thought school officials made the right call in allowing the school to open, he replied, "I think it's a poor decision to build schools on contaminated sites."
Wolfe agreed.
"If it's my kid, no way in hell would I let a school board build on a contaminated site," he said.
By: Paul Brubaker
