Published: Thursday, April 29, 2010, 8:55 PM Updated: Friday, April 30, 2010, 5:24 AM
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NEWARK -- Every day, more than 800 children at the Wilson Avenue School in Newark arrive at their Ironbound building, then get on a bus to go two miles to another facility in Harrison where they attend classes.
At the end of the day, they do the reverse commute.
That ride, necessitated by flooding and the discovery of benzene at Wilson Avenue School, is costing the Newark School District about $1,600 a day, a spokeswoman said. By the end of the school year, the total tab will be $96,000.
But most parents say the cost may be much higher for their children and worry some of them may have been poisoned by the air inside the 129-year-old school.
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"My son says, ‘Mommy what’s in the school — am I going to get sick?’" Anabela Silva said of 9-year-old Brian.
According to a letter sent home to parents from the state Department of Health and Human Services, the Newark district’s facilities department detected an odor inside the school on March 22. After conducting tests of indoor air samples on April 1, elevated levels of benzene, tetrachloroethene and 1,4-dichlorobenze were discovered.
Ed Putnum, assistant director of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s publicly funded remediation, told an audience at a meeting Tuesday that a sump pump failed, flooding the school’s basement gym floor. He said testing of water in the building showed gasoline contamination.
Putnum and his investigators believe gasoline leaked from an underground tank or spilled and contaminated the ground water. When water levels rose and the ground water passed into the basement, the gas vapors floated into the school.
After those initial tests, the Newark district relocated students — first to a nearby high school and then to the facility in Harrison.
In addition to paying $1,600 a day for 18 school buses — for a total of $96,036 from April 14 until June 29, last day of school — the district pays $60,000 a month to house students at the former Holy Cross School in Harrison, district officials said.
Putnum said investigators will sample ground water around the school and nearby buildings. In addition to testing, he said, the department plans to make improvements to the sump pits at the school by adding a second pump, covering the pits and installing a ventilation pipe.
Putnum said the improvements would be done by this summer, and investigators will conduct more air sampling before students return to the school.
Parents though were still concerned.
"If you read the facts on benzene, it does scare you," said Mariana Oliveira, 29, after Tuesday’s meeting. "We don’t know how long the chemicals have been there."
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