Wake County abandons Superfund site for new high school

The Wake County school system has abandoned plans to build a high school on land in northeast Raleigh that’s on both state and federal lists of hazardous-waste sites.

The school board had agreed in June to offer $4.5 million for the 32.55-acre former Corning Glass Works industrial plant site at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and New Hope Church Road. But Wake school administrators said a further review of the site discovered more soil contamination from chlorinated solvents – which can cause respiratory or other health issues – than previously identified.

“We realized it’s just not possible to guarantee that other issues might not arise,” said Betty Parker, Wake’s senior director of real estate services. “Student and faculty safety is more important than anything else. We presented it to the (school) board and they decided not to move forward with the site.”

The board voted Oct. 6 to transfer its rights to the property back to the previous owner. School board Chairwoman Christine Kushner said terminating the deal was the right decision to make. But she said it was disappointing.

Parker said Wake will lose a $30,000 non-refundable deposit on the property. But she said spending that amount now is better than the cost of dealing with further problems later.

Wake has been looking for land to build a high school near central Raleigh. Wake typically builds high schools on 60-acre parcels, but the lack of available properties that large near central Raleigh led to Parker bringing the Corning Glass plant to the board’s attention.

In the 1980s, the capacitor plant was placed on the EPA Superfund list, meaning it was eligible to receive federal funding for cleanup of hazardous materials. After an assessment was completed, it was put on the Superfund archive list in 1989 with no further remedial action planned under the program.

But the closed plant has annually remained on the state’s inactive hazardous waste sites priority list, which identifies sites where uncontrolled disposal, spills or release of hazardous waste may have been present.

The Corning plant has been monitored by the state since 1992 when efforts began to clean groundwater contaminated by industrial solvents such as trichloroethylene and volatile organics that were used at the site.

“We knew from the beginning it might be a close call because we knew there had been contamination,” Parker said. “But it had been discovered and remediated for years. We felt the risk was known.”

When the deal was announced, school leaders said they would not go ahead with the purchase unless they were sure the site was safe.

Parker said administrators are still committed to finding a high school site in the central part of the county. It’s something the board also wants as well.

“I’m very interested in continuing to look for nontraditional sites in and around the core of Wake County,” Kushner said.

This story was originally published October 18, 2015 at 3:33 PM with the headline "Wake County abandons Superfund site for new high school."