Copyright 2004, 2007, The News-Dispatch, All Rights Reserved.
| August 30, 2004
Deborah Sederberg The News-Dispatch |
| Last spring, the Michigan City Area Schools' elementary-facilities committee recommended the school be rebuilt, either at its present site, 1594 N. Porter County Road 500 East, or elsewhere. Pine is the only MCAS building in Porter County. Students living in a portion of Pine Township in Porter County attend the Michigan City school, while those in other parts of the township attend school in the Duneland district. Since last April, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been providing bottled drinking water to the school, just as it has to the occupants of several area homes because some wells are contaminated with various substances, including boron, manganese, arsenic and lead. Tests have found slightly elevated levels of molybdenum in the well water at Pine School. The EPA safety level for molybdenum now stands at 10 parts per million. Pine School water tests at 10.8 parts per million. EPA spokesman Tim Drexler said last spring the EPA likely will revise its safety-action levels for molybdenum. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an action level of 50 parts per million, five times the EPA's standard.. The EPA last year reached a consent agreement with NIPSCO and Brown Inc. relating to the production, distribution and disposal of fly ash, a byproduct of producing electricity with coal. According to the terms of that agreement, the two companies will pay to extend city water from Michigan City to the town of Pines, and into 130 homes with contaminated wells in the town. Others in the area have opted to tap into the water at their own expense. Pine School, located south of U.S. 20, is not within town limits. It, in fact, is about a mile from the nearest water line. In another project, the town of Beverly Shores also decided to bring city water to town. For a while, the MCAS thought it might get a price break because the town is extending the lines west. "But Beverly Shores wants $125,000 to tap into their line," MCAS business manager Vince Taylor said. That tap-in fee makes it less expensive to bring water from another point, father away from the school. With the Beverly Shores tap-in fee, it would cost $700,000 to bring water to the school. To bring water from a more distant point, which would entail laying more pipe, the cost would be $586,894. The school corporation now must decide how to handle the situation. Should it spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring city water to Pine School? Should it continue to provide bottled water after the EPA agreement ends in April? Or should it consider a sophisticated filtering system based on reverse osmosis? Last Tuesday, MCAS Director of Plant Planning Tony Gianesi said he is meeting with consultants who are testing the water at Pine School. He also is investigating the possibility of using the sophisticated filtering system known as reverse osmosis to clean the Pine School water. Peggy Richardson, a member of the local environmental advocacy group People In Need of Environmental Safety (P.I.N.E.S.), does not believe the reverse osmosis process will work. Richardson, who lives south of U.S. 20, not within the town limits of Pines, serves as chair of the Pine Township Advisory Board. "I think they're taking chances," Richardson said, referring to the reverse osmosis process. Pine Elementary School Principal Sally Roberts said Friday she's heard no concerns about water during the first three days of school. "I'm hearing absolutely nothing from parents," she said. Taylor does not yet have a firm price on a reverse osmosis system, but knows it will be much less expensive than bringing water to the school. "If I had to guess now, I'd say (reverse osmosis) would cost about $30,000," he said. "But that's just a guess." Continuing to provide bottled water would be too expensive in the long run, Taylor said, unless the board decides to rebuild the school and have it up and running by, say, the beginning of the 2006 school year. "If they rebuild the school, that's when it would make sense to bring in the city water," he said. "The cost of bringing in water could be built into the (construction) bond issue." Contact Deborah Sederberg at dsederberg@thenewsdispatch.com |
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Copyright 2004, 2007, The News-Dispatch, All Rights Reserved. |