Last year, lawmakers passed Act 74, which allocates $4.5 million to test for PCBs in every Vermont school constructed or renovated before 1980. The legislation gives the Department of Environmental Conservation the authority to require action when elevated levels of PCBs are found, but does not provide any money to fund that action.
The state expects to test between 300 to 400 schools as part of the first such initiative in the country.
Coppolino said testing will begin this spring and take more than two years to complete. Because of the size of the project, the state has contracted with six environmental consulting firms — five in Vermont and one in New Hampshire — to carry out the work. The state will prioritize testing schools with younger students and ones built during “the heyday of PCB use,” between the late 1950s and 1975, Coppolino said.
Consultants will first do an inventory of each school to determine all of the potential building materials that may contain PCBs. Before being banned by the EPA in 1979, the chemicals were often contained in window caulk, tile adhesive and lighting ballasts.
Coppolino estimates that around 30 percent of rooms in each school will be sampled, depending on what the inventory finds. A pump with a filter must run for 24 hours in each room being tested, Coppolino said, though students can be in school when the testing is underway. Based on the findings, the consultant will provide a report to each school with next steps.
It’s unclear what the new guidance means for Burlington High School. Since last March, students have been learning in a temporary downtown high school, the site of a former Macy’s department store. District officials have decided to forgo $70 million in renovations and instead want to build a new high school.
Despite New PCB Guidance, Burlington Still Needs New High School, Superintendent Says
Despite New PCB Guidance, Burlington Still Needs New High School, Superintendent Says
By Alison Novak
Off Message
Planning is currently underway, and the district is expected to put a bond for the project to voters in November. School officials have defended the decision to build anew, saying PCBs are widespread in building materials as well as the air, and that the district is in dire need of a fresh start.
“It’s hard to look back and see what could have been done differently [in Burlington] if we [had] current practices in place,” Coppolino said.
She said the DEC and Burlington school administrators recently discussed whether the new guidance would allow the reopening of administrative offices in the high school’s Building A. The school district has not asked about using other parts of the building, Coppolino said, but if it did, she said the DEC would work with them to see what was possible.
As for other schools in Vermont, Coppolino said it’s unclear how widespread PCB contamination might be. The only data the state has on PCBs in schools is testing results from Burlington High School and a 2013 pilot study in which four schools in the state were tested for the airborne chemicals. None of those schools showed alarming PCB levels.
One source of potential concern is old fluorescent light ballasts, a common source of PCBs. Lighting ballasts were the main source of widespread PCB contamination at Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Wash., where a jury recently awarded $247 million to students, parents and teachers who suffered severe health effects from exposure to the chemicals.
In the mid-1990s, Vermont conducted a light ballast changeout program that many schools participated in, Coppolino said, but there are still some school buildings with old light ballasts. Furthermore, some schools may have taken out fluorescent lights, but not the capacitors in the light fixtures, which are actually the source of PCBs, Coppolino said.
“I don’t know,” Coppolino said when asked what the upcoming testing might find. “I hate to say one way or another what might happen.”
