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BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. It may be snowing this week, but Briarcliff School District officials are looking ahead to warmer weather on the districts fields.
The Briarcliff Board of Education unanimously agreed Monday night to remediate the high schools softball field with a natural turf option. As part of the same resolution, the board agreed to let site investigation company HDR submit an official remediation action plan and soil testing results to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Core samples representing the natural turf options are available for public viewing at the districts office next to Todd Elementary School.
DEC inspectors found the softball field and practice field to be contaminated with "non-exempt" material in 1999 and issued a violation to the school district. The fields became contaminated in 1998 when a trucking company reportedly deposited about 100,000 cubic yards of fill that did not meet DEC requirements. The district started cleaning up and sampling the fields but further remediation ceased in 2004 when the board of education opted not to fund additional probing. Instead, the board decided to deposit additional fill on the fields and cover up monitoring wells.
Mike Musso, an environmental engineer for HDR, told the board Monday night that once the plan was submitted, the DEC would get back to the district on possible approval.
The DEC has looked into the impact on groundwater and theres none of that leaching going on, Musso said of the current state of the fields. Its been tested by other consultants, weve followed up on that testing as well and were not seeing that.
Board President Guy Rotondo said he was pleased the process was moving forward.
I think this was a great presentation and we really appreciate the work that went into it, Rotondo said, adding that Mondays presentation was the third on the field remediation process in the last year. Weve had a few meetings on this topic now and its been really good to work with HDR on this.
Board members said at previous meeting that it might be a while before construction begins on the site.
"It'll be two years before we have a playable surface," trustee Eric Bashford said in January.
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