WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — More than half of Hartford High School needs to be razed and rebuilt because of chemical contamination, and school officials are scrambling to find funding to begin addressing the problem.

The contamination comes from polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, which were commonly used in construction material prior to 1980. So far, testing has shown the presence of PCBs at the high school and the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center.

The School Board is considering redirecting a portion of a $21 million voters approved last year for other building repairs. Now some of the money might be used to plan for extensive remediation work.

“We are going to tear down 60 percent of the high school in all likelihood and have to rebuild it in record time,” Hartford School District Facilities Manager Jonathan Garthwaite told the School Board at its April 23 meeting, according to a video recording. “These are areas we have to demolish. There’s no way around it.”

Act 74, which the Vermont Legislature passed in 2021, requires all districts to test for PCBs in educational facilities constructed prior to 1980 and cleanup of any PCBs that are found. PCBs can cause cancer, as well as affect the body’s nervous, immune, reproductive and endocrine systems, according to the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.

PCBs are burrowed in the cinder block walls at Hartford High School, including the much-used gymnasium, auditorium and cafeteria, Garthwaite said in an interview.

“To leave it in the walls, not only are we rolling the dice on air quality, we are also kicking a huge expensive liability down the road to someone else,” he said.

Elsewhere in the district, Hartford Memorial Middle School tested negative for PCBs.

Article continues after...

Yesterday's Most Read Articles

Dog dies when car rolls into Lake Fairlee

Dump truck driver faces charges in death of pedestrian in Newport

Bradford Selectboard members resign following fire department turnover

A Life: ‘They all remembered Becky’

Incident that led to school lockdown in Haverhill was hoax, officials say

‘Roads, roads, roads’ — Claremont City Council restores $200,000 for paving next year

Your Daily Puzzles

Cross|Word

Flipart

Typeshift

SpellTower

Really Bad Chess

Air testing at the White River School was conducted over April break and the results are expected in the coming weeks, Garthwaite said.

Two other elementary buildings, Dothan Brook School and Ottaquechee School, which were built in the 1990s, are exempt from testing because PCBs were banned in 1979 by the federal Toxic Substances Control Act.

Despite the mandate from lawmakers, money the state appropriated for testing has run out, leaving districts such Hartford to foot the bill for testing. Additionally, there are no state funds available to help with construction or remediation costs.

“We have to do it. We didn’t choose Act 74. None of us in this building chose to have this building built when it was built, and we sure as hell didn’t choose to have contaminants used in its building,” Hartford High School Principal Nelson Fogg said at the April 23 meeting. “Too bad, that’s the state we’re in. So we can’t really dictate what happens to us, but we have all the authority in the world to deal with how we respond to what is happening to us.”

Before PCB removal can begin, the district must fund what Garthwaite estimated to be “hundreds of thousands of dollars in soft costs,” which include further testing, along with working with architects and engineers to come up with a plan for a temporary kitchen to prepare school meals and relocate the heating plant, which is housed in the northeast corner of the gym, among other challenges.

“Kids got to eat. We have to have phys ed. We have to have performing arts,” Garthwaite said during the meeting. “We have to do what we do and all of that has to happen while this chaos is going on around us. This is much more than a planned renovation where we have years to consider what we’re doing. We’re dropping a bomb here.”

As much as $6.5 million of the $21 million bond voters approved last year will be used this summer to replace the roofs at the Ottauquechee School and Dothan Brook School, complete a drainage project at Ottauquechee School, replace the chimney and upgrade the elevator at the middle school, as well as repair and replace doors at various district buildings, Garthwaite said.

School Board chairwoman Nancy Russell appeared supportive of Garthwaite’s request to put money toward the PCB remediation planning and bulk sampling.

“When we voted for that bond, we did not know that this was going to happen,” she said at the April 23 meeting. “I would hope that our public would be understanding enough to say, ‘This is a big emergency here and we need to take care of it.’ We need to be putting these kids and our staff first.”

But Wilder resident Colin Butler told the School Board he was uncomfortable with using part of the bond to pay for PCB remediation planning costs.

“The voters voted to spend $21 million on a list of stuff that the board told the public was absolutely critical,” he said during the meeting.

Garthwaite is currently putting together requests for proposals to do additional bulk sampling at the high school and tech center and for phase one of the abatement project. Phase one would include demolishing and rebuilding the culinary arts kitchen and classroom, the health sciences classrooms, the auditorium, the cafeteria/kitchen and the gym.

“The thought behind it is we do those spaces first, reconstruct them, and use them as swing spaces while we address the remainder of the impacted spaces,” Garthwaite said. “I would like to start abatement activities, removal of toxins as quickly as possible after graduation. That’s the intent.”

The school district does not have any money set aside for the full remediation project.

Right now, school officials are hopeful funding for the work will come from the Monsanto Corp. — which manufactured PCBs from the 1930s through the 1970s that other companies used for building materials. The district has joined about 100 other Vermont school districts — including a dozen in the Upper Valley — in a lawsuit against the company.

Monsanto’s parent company, Bayer, has been settling other lawsuits brought against Monsanto for its manufacturing of PCBs. Last year, for example, the company agreed to multi-million dollar settlements with the cities of Los Angeles and Seattle, according to news reports.

“There’s no reason to think that we won’t recover these costs,” Garthwaite said in a phone interview. “When we get to the point where we have actual numbers related to abatement, that will be the point at which we discuss our funding options.”

PCB contamination has already displaced some Hartford students.

At the beginning of the current school year, the technical center’s culinary arts program relocated to a former American Legion hall off Sykes Mountain Avenue because PCB levels were found to be at “immediate action levels” as defined by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.

Culinary classes will remain at the off-campus site for the next school year as well, Garthwaite said.

Two health sciences classrooms also had to be relocated, but officials were able to find space for them in district buildings.

The School Board is scheduled to meet Wednesday and discussions about how to fund the “soft costs” are expected to continue then.

Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.

CORRECTION: From the 1930s through 1970s, Monsanto Corp. manufactured polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which other companies used to make construction materials. A previous version of this story incorrectly described Monsanto's role in the production of the construction materials containing the chemicals.