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Updated: Jun 19th, 2005 - 20:05:13 |
A hasty decision to build an elementary school on land contaminated with arsenic, DDT and other pollutants will cost taxpayers more than $200,000.
The Seminole County School Board agreed Tuesday to pay Schenkel Shultz Architecture an extra $205,750 to redesign the new Midway Elementary for a different site after the original location was found to be so contaminated it would be too costly to clean up.
The company said it must make a number of changes to the school plans and resubmit requests for permits from various agencies because of the change.
"We hate having to spend any more money, but we are trying to get this school built," School Board Chairman Jeanne Morris said.
Morris said building the $11 million school on the abandoned University of Florida agricultural experimentation station on Celery Avenue east of town seemed like a good idea at first, even though officials knew the property had been tainted with harmful chemicals.
School officials scuttled that plan in February after they determined the cost of a pesticide cleanup could run as high as $10 million.
The state-owned property would have been free, so officials jumped at the offer. Plans for the school were well along when they reconsidered.
The new site for the school is 36 acres within the proposed Cameron Heights residential development east of town. The School Board will pay about $1.5 million for the property, which also is large enough for a middle school to be built later.
Superintendent Bill Vogel said the switch in sites has delayed the project briefly. Construction of the new school, which will replace the old Midway Elementary, is set to begin in the fall, he said, with the school opening in January 2007.
Seminole County Watch.com
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