This just came out today. Click on the link below.
There is a letter from the BOE President and Interim Superintendent that discusses what they found in the Orchard School soil. It’s not good. They have scheduled a mtg tomorrow night at BF middle school for the public. Also, this morning they fenced off the entire Orchard School field. No one is allowed on it. They may be finally owning up to what I always thought was a tainted situation that no one wanted to deal with.
BREAKING NEWS Ridgewood Public Schools has just received laborotory results for soil samples collected at the Orchard School this summer. For complete details, please click on link. – Orchard Soil Test Results
>http://www.state.nj.us/dep/srp/kcs-nj/bergen/kcs0251.htm
NJ Dept. Env. Protection
Site Remediation and Waste Management
RIDGEWOOD ASH LANDFILL
Street: DEMAREST ST ZIP: 07540
Preferred ID: G000008572
Contact: BFO-N
Status: Active
Status Date: 7/9/1998
Remedial Level: C1
CEA & Date: None
Deed Notice & Date: None
Eng. Control & Date: None
NPL Status & Date:
X Coord: 594902 Y Coord: 779658
Coordinate System: NJ State Plane (NAD83) – USFEET
C1:
Remediation does not require a formal design. The source of the contamination is known or has been identified. There is a potential for ground water contamination.
Anyone care to guess how close the pumping station for our district’s water is from Orchard School?
It is just a bit south and west of the stream running along Orchard field.
>10:33 AM,
LAN has lied in the past. Why should anyone believe their hired expert (geologist).
If it not so bad, why fence off the field? Why call an emergency meeting? Why have another meeting this Monday at the campus center?
If this is no big deal, why did they call a press conference?
Why? Why is there contamination where the new art room is, when none existed before?
We await your wisdom and insight.
>10:33am and all who attended
Where there representatives from the EPA at that meeting?
Did the EPA approve or supervise all the digs including the 2000 field work?
Is the EPA involved now?
What does it take to be classfied as Superfund site?
Can you dig in a Superfund site without EPA approval?
Where are the boundries of the site?
Please … anyone at that meeting… were these questions answered?
>10:33 AM: If you want to blame someone for “creating fear” then put the blame where it belongs … not the posters … rather the boe and administration for putting up fences, calling a press conference, setting up a BF meeting and a boe meeting at the RHS campus center.
If this is nothing more than what parents have in their own backyard then “Take that fence down, Mr. Muller.”
>At the meeting there were NO third parties. The people responding to questions were the very people who screwed up in the first place.
That should tell you all you need to know about HOW they answered our questions.
We will NEVER get the truth or an apology from these people. LAN Associates has the most to loose and so they will do a song and dance till the cows come home.
>The headline in Friday’s Record read, “Ridgewood sees no threat to health at Orchard School.” If that is true, then why is the fence still up?
>Here you go again! This time the BOE tries to respond quickly, acts to put up a fence just in case, calls a meeting, sends a letter…does all this stuff to try and get out in front of the news and not have the public yelling at them for NOT reacting…and NOW you’re mad at them for overreacting? For putting up the fence and calling meetings?
It is clear from everything I’ve read that this is NOT such a big deal…if people don’t trust the BOE or LAN Associates, then I think it would be helpful to have a third party come and say so. THEN maybe the chicken littles will go pack to their coops. But the research I’ve tried to do in the past few days (albeit as a lay person and not a geologist), shows that this is probably not a dire situation. Let’s all calm down.
>6:34 PM,
“this is probably not a dire situation.”
“Probably,” being the operative word.
So, what the heck, lets take down the fence.
One can only assume that you do not have children at Orchard or you wouldn’t be so cavalier with your defense of the BOE. Am I right?
>Well Bloggers,
Go get that 3rd party to tell the truth.
New Jersey Department of EPA
Lisa P. Jackson, Commissioner
401 E. State St.
7th Floor, East Wing
P.O. Box 402
Trenton, NJ 08625-0402
phone: 609-292-2885
fax: 609-292-7695
Ask Ms. Jackson for the answers.
>To report an environmental incident impacting NJ, call the Toll-Free 24-Hour Hotline
1-877-WARNDEP / 1-877-927-6337
>No, 6:34 PM, you calm down … you are on such a rant and it is getting tiresome. Parents will know for sure it is not a big deal when the fence comes down. Until then, you just go back to your little research project.
>Gee 6:34 mebee you can help muller take down the ugly fence.
>Having over 300 kids cooped up in school all day is a dire situation. I understand that 3 classes can play on the asphalt basketball courts at a time — a very crowded and hot situation.
>6:34 — No one is mad at the Boe for acting quickly. We’re mad as hell at them for DIGGING into the ashfill (3 times!) in the first place when they had viable alternatives.
Now our kids are stuck playing for God knows how long on a small blacktop unable to venture onto the playground or field.
That is why we are mad. Because the BOE and its principal are stubborn, stupid, defensive and arrogant. And they won’t take responsibility for their failures.
At that meeting Bombace actually floated the idea that a contractor brought contaminated soil (gee, it was ash too) to the site and that that was how it got to the back of the building.
I mean, c’mon already!
>Does anyone have any idea when the fence will be taken down now that we have been assured by the anonymous lay non-geological researchers on this blog that there is minimal if any health hazard to our children?
>You can bet that parental concerns will escalate the longer the fence remains.
>7:38 how would Ms. Jackson know why our BOE decided to dig into the ash fill?
Would anyone with a brain think that’s alright to do?
It’s not like they didn’t know it was there.
>8:57AM
She probably didn’t know, that’s the point.
The EPA needs to be consulted on this immediately.
>I feel for the Orchard teachers who have to keep their charges happy indoors or on that small crowded asphalt patch.
Boob Muller is probably sitting in his office with the door closed and the A/C blasting away to drown out the whiny kids.
>If you look at the meeting agenda tonight we get to hear from 2 more of the hired help from the boe.
Why can’t we hear from a disinterested (read: non compromised) third party?
Oh, that’s not how our boe does business. They only tell us what they want us to hear.
>6:41am- Bombace did not float that idea. The geologist floated that idea. Bombace repeated it back to the goelogist.
The geologist is not hired by LAN or the BOE. He was hired by the VOR when they did the work.
Check your facts, like I did, before you go on throwing false information again.
>That’s right 5:26. To further clarify, the fill that was brought in to regrade the field, which was done in compliance with DEP regulations and environmental standards, could have (and most likely did) also contain some levels of PAHs, since this type of soil or “historical fill” was not required to undergo this type of testing.
I was overall impressed with the information presented tonight and the manner in which it was presented. I think the whole process on this has been handled surprisingly well by the BOE, although if you ask me, it would have been understandable if they were more defensive. The surprising thing is, they actually did not come off that way. For once.
>Okay 5:26 so he said it but he didn’t say it. I get it. Jeez you people are nuts.
Where did they dispose of the excavated dirt? Pray tell us, since they didn’t use it according to you anywhere on the property. Do you know?
>Floating an idea does not mean that it has to be one’s own original thought – which probably does not occur with Mark on a regular basis anyway.
>Last night, the guy from LAN said that the excavated dirt was replaced under the foundation of the new buildings. Which would be safe since it’s cement.