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Schools Delay Notification Of Risk

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By CHRISTIAN M. WADE

cwade@tampatrib.com

Published: December 21, 2008

Updated: 12/21/2008 12:12 am

TAMPA - Several of the city's old landfills are buried beneath public schools.

Pizzo Elementary, Roland Park Middle School, Lockhart Elementary and Young Middle Magnet School were built on or near land once used to bury Tampa's garbage.

On Nov. 7, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection sent a letter to the Hillsborough County School District informing officials that higher-than-acceptable levels of arsenic, lead and other toxic contaminants had been discovered in soil and groundwater tests taken at the sites through the years.

The letter said state law requires the to district notify teachers, parents and guardians whose children attend the four schools and that more extensive testing was needed.

But the notification letters were never mailed.

Instead, the district held a meeting with Tampa officials to discuss whether the schools should comply with the demands and whether DEP's information was accurate.

In a response to DEP's demands, the school district's attorney, George Gramling III, requested an extension to notify teachers, parents and guardians until April 30.

"The three landfills ceased operations more than 40 years ago and the district cannot yet determine whether the current condition of these landfills requires any notification and if so, what that notification should contain," he wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to DEP officials. "A responsible review of these sites cannot be accomplished in a few weeks."

DEP spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller said the agency will grant the district's request.

The district also disputes some of DEP's information on the old dumps, arguing that there is no record of contamination at the Young, Lockhart and Roland Park schools and that Pizzo has been monitored for methane gas emissions since it opened in 1998.
Gramling said the district plans to hire a consultant to review test results.

City officials said the sites near or under the schools were not municipal landfills but private property where the city and others were allowed to dump their garbage.

And, as with other old dump sites, they argue that there are no known health risks.

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