Robbinsdale Middle School in Robbinsdale, Minnesota has secured a $600,000 grant that will be used to clean up a landfill on the school grounds. The landfill was discovered after the school was built in the 1950s. Underneath the ground surrounding the school, the underground landfill pit contains hazardous materials and refuse, including tires, paint cans, and oil containers. In addition, some believe that asbestos-containing materials could also be present at the site.
Asbestos can be deadly, and is linked to the development of life-threatening illnesses like lung cancer, COPD, mesothelioma, and asbestosis. If asbestos is uncovered during the cleanup, special precautions will have to be taken to ensure the fibers do not become airborne.
The dump was discovered only recently. Back in 2004, workers who were maintaining the school’s athletic fields stumbled across the landfill. This sparked a variety of expensive tests and cleanup efforts. Now, thanks to a grant from Hennepin County, the school district can finally afford to clean up the entire site. Workers will dig four feet into the ground across a 18,000 square foot area.
"Four feet of soil is quite an amount of cubic feet of soil," said Robbinsdale district spokesman Jeff Dehler. "So there will be a significant amount of work that happens…We will remove the soil from the current surface area, have it safely removed, and put it in some kind of contaminated-soil space, wherever the state reserves space for that kind of stuff…It’s just like dozens and dozens of sites all over the place," he said. "There was not care taken years ago to appropriately dispose of some waste that could contaminate soil or groundwater."
The project will begin next June.