The House Committee on Education has discussed and heard testimony on H.542, a bill that proposes to end testing of additional schools for 8 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
While the bill, introduced by Rep. Conlon of Cornwall, will allow remediation of schools previously identified to have unacceptable levels of PCBs, it will not provide funds for testing additional schools.
While the state has funds available to complete mitigation on public and approved private schools that have already been tested and found to have unacceptably levels of PCBs, there are no funds currently allocated to conduct further testing on schools built before 1980, which are most likely to contain the chemicals.
Conlon said it’s an unfunded mandate if the testing requirement remains.
Only two schools have been tested in the 11 towns The Hardwick Gazette reports on. Areas in
Cabot School and Hardwick Elementary School were both tested to have levels too high to allow long-term student occupancy.
The 2022 discovery of PCBs in the Cabot School led to installation of air filtration systems and ongoing monitoring.
Mitigation work at Hardwick Elementary last summer followed the initial report of high PCB levels during air quality testing in 2022.
Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union’s Director of Operations Joe Houston said, “The testing protocol devised by the state comes in two stages. Stage one tests the airborne PCB concentration throughout the building. They don’t test every room, but break them up by the types of materials present and then taking samples from a percentage of each composition group.
“This first round of testing for Hazen would likely be in the $20,000-$25,000 range although there are a lot of factors that could change that number,” said Houston.
“If the initial air tests show levels above action levels for the particular age bands, then all potentially PCB containing materials would be investigated and tested again by taking representative samples throughout the building. The cost of this operation would be dependent on the materials identified, but would be expected to be in the $50,000-$75,000 range.”
“All of these values are based on the cost for Hardwick Elementary and then scaled up for the square footage difference between HES and Hazen.”
That’s obviously an expensive proposition, especially if the cost of testing the remainder of OSSU schools, including Lakeview School in Greensboro, Woodbury Elementary and Craftsbury Academy are added in.
Beyond the OSSU there’s Twinfield, Wolcott Elementary and Calais Elementary.
What’s the risk of not testing a school to the health of students there if it might turn out to have PCBs?
How is that risk to be evaluated against an obviously expensive testing process?
Houston’s estimates suggest a cost of roughly $100,000 to test Hazen Union School. If PCBs were discovered at unacceptable levels measures would need to be taken to relocate students until mitigation measures could be taken.
I suspect the liability of discovering there’s a problem much later and potential lawsuits that might come from it are significantly higher than the cost of resolving high levels if they are discovered.
And, if high levels aren’t discovered everyone’s fears about them would be put to rest.
“I would not say that the committee yet has a common opinion on this, said Rep. Leanne Harple a month ago, “I seem to be the squeakiest wheel.”
“This week, we heard testimony from Elaine Collins about how difficult it was to move North Country out into tents while mitigation occurred. I am not sure that most of the committee considers it doable to move whole classes out. But yes, the cost of health and life down the road should be strongly considered in this decision.
Harple continued, “One idea I brought up was in the future we could pass legislation that allows teachers to apply for this sort of presumed cause protection that firefighters have, which would essentially make them eligible for workers’ comp if they got sick. They passed it for firefighters a few years ago. But then the chair brought up how it would be impossible to determine if they got sick from school or apartments, or many other possible sources.
Concluding, she said “Everyone agrees that this is very complicated.”
While the issue is most certainly complicated, I hope the Vermont Legislatures and schools arrive at a solution that prioritizes testing of chemicals linked to higher rates of cancer in humans over a current lack of funding.
Passing H.542 to avoid the issue because funds are tight is not the right way to handle it.
School PCB testing must continue.
Paul Fixx, editor
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
