Rush City schools to demolish bus garage

By Barbara Brown
The Rush City school bus garage finally will be torn down after the district school board voted last week to dedicate a $30,000 budget surplus toward demolition.
In a unanimous vote at the regular Thursday meeting of the Rush City School Board, the decision was made to demolish the 1952-built bus garage because of health and safety concerns.
Board member Gwen Goretsas said during the meeting that the district had talked about demolishing the garage for years and that it was time the district acted.
The board agreed to let district staff seek bids and estimates for the project.
Superintendent Tim Eklund told the board he could not be sure how much the project would cost, but that the $30,000 would make a dent any expenditure.
In 2001, Rush City district voters were asked to pass a referendum to allow the district to set a property tax to pay for the new elementary school and a new bus garage.
That question failed and it was presented again in spring 2002, without the bus garage question.
The construction question passed and the new elementary school is scheduled to open this coming school year.
In the meantime, however, the bus garage has fallen into disrepair, Eklund told the school board, creating a health and safety risk for employees and local residents.
The garage can only store 10 of the districtís 20 buses. Two drivers now take buses to their homes in the evenings.
A new site will be found to park the buses during the demolition and reconstruction process and other bus drivers will be asked if they are willing to store buses on their property during the school year.
A 2001 estimate put a $775,000 price on a new garage.
The board did not hold a discussion on reconstruction possibilities. An added benefit to the demolition of the bus garage is that it could speed up the extraction of gallons of gasoline that spilled underground over the years.
The district formerly had two underground fuel tanks that held fuel for the buses. One of those tanks leaked, but no one knew until they were removed in 1999.
Since then the district has worked with hydrogeologist Paul Meisch and other environmental consultants to remove the fuel, which leaked into an area 100 feet wide and 200 feet deep, through a process that collects vapor which eventually condenses back into liquid.
Meisch asked the school board last week to consider allowing engineers to install horizontal extraction vents to remove more fuel vapors from the site.
Meisch told the board the current extraction process ñ using vents driven into the ground vertically ñ has slowed dramatically since its first year when 25 gallons of fuel had been extracted per day.
Currently, the vents are pulling only 4/100ths of a gallon of fuel out of the ground per day.
Meisch said his firm recently changed the method of extraction into a forced-air process during which machine-pushed air was forced into the ground below the fuel spill in an effort to push the contaminant to the surface.
That method caused a stir last week when fire officials were called to the dentistís office on Eliot Ave. because fumes had built up in the crawl space under the building and caused several people to suffer headaches.
Meisch said that although the fumes were not at the flammable stage then, it was possible for the concentration to increase to a flammable stage.
He said his firm wanted to use the safest and most efficient process to extract the vapors and using horizontal vents would allow a wider area to be extracted without risk of fumes building up.
The board agreed to entertain the horizontal vent method as soon as the bus garage was demolished.
Meisch estimated the project will continue for two years using the horizontal vent method, but it would have stretched to four years if they continued with the vertical vent method.
Also during the meeting, the board announced dates to file for candidacy for the school board. Three 4-year term seats are up for election: those of Susan Turner, Scott Tryon and Mark Moulton.
Filing will be accepted Aug. 26 through Sept. 9. The election will be Tuesday, Nov. 4.

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