STRATFORD -- About 20 Wilcoxson School first-graders on a field trip Tuesday walked by an illegally excavated East Main Street property in the Raymark Superfund area, possibly exposing the youngsters to airborne contaminants, officials said Friday.
School officials, parents and environmental activists were irate Friday that local, state and federal officials failed to notify them until late Thursday of the potential risk posed by airborne toxic materials unearthed at 340 East Main St., including asbestos, lead and PCBs.
Joseph Marcell violated warnings not to excavate his mother's property "in direct defiance of the state Department of Environmental Protection," according to State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
School officials said had they been warned in a timely manner they would not have allowed the Wilcoxson children to walk right by the site, within a few yards of the location where state Department of Environmental Protection crews were working Tuesday to block it off from the public and stop the spread of contamination.
Officials said Marcell had been working with trucks and pay loaders at the site last weekend for at least several days before they learned he was illegally excavating toxic soil.
"This was a complete breakdown in communications that posed a health risk to our students and staff," said Supt. of Schools Irene Cornish, adding that she was not notified about the excavation until Thursday. "Not only are we concerned about the children who walked within a few yards of the property on their way to a field trip Tuesday, there have also been countless other students at a number of our schools who pass by that site every day."
Startford Health Director Lisa Pippa, however, said while her department considers the excavation "a very serious matter and a potential threat to public health, the risk to those pupils or anyone else walking by the site is minimal. The excavation needed to be stopped immediately, but the health risk to people in the surrounding area did not rise to the level where we believed we had to send out an emergency warning."
Wilcoxson Principal Deborah Dayo on Friday sent a letter to parents of students who walked by the school on their field trip.
"After consulting with the Stratford Health Department, we are confident that it was highly unlikely your child was exposed to dust that may have been generated from the work," Dayo states in the letter. "The Health Department explained that by Tuesday morning all unauthorized and dangerous excavation had ceased and all work [that day] was done by experts, with the necessary precautions in place to prevent the production of dust."
Both DEP and EPA officials on the scene Thursday said there is no way of knowing how much contaminated material became airborne, and when they ceased being hazardous.
Marcell, who was at the site Friday, said he "hasn't slept in days," but declined comment about the incident until he has a chance to "consult with my attorney.
"All I will say is that if there were such a hazard, why were all the DEP workers out there without wearing protective equipment or masks?" he said.
A friend of Marcell's, Antonio Xavier, called him "a hard-working guy who didn't do anything wrong. For many years he's been waiting for the federal government to clean up the site and get rid of the toxic waste."
State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal won an emergency court order Thursday against Marcell, whose mother, Helen Marcell, owns the property where the excavation took place, which threatened to expose homes and businesses to harmful contaminants, he said. The attorney general said he sought the court order to secure the property on behalf of the DEP and prevent poisonous materials from spreading to businesses and a residential neighborhood about 150 yards away.
The state and federal agencies' emergency response teams were on the site through Friday to secure the site, where a large black tarp and other protective materials covered some of the property surrounded by an iron fence with a sign warning in bold black letters: "Danger: Asbestos Hazard. Do Not Enter."
"This is mind boggling. It is exactly what we have been warning about for the past two years, and others before us for a decade about the importance of getting this poisonous junk out of Stratford and not to consolidate it in or near residential neighborhoods," said Tom Smith, president of SaveStratford, a grassroots movement working with the DEP and EPA on a permanent plan to remove and remediate Raymark waste at about 25 remaining properties in town. "But it looks like the warning came a little too late."
Smith and his group were instrumental in having legislation approved and signed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell last year that prevents the EPA from moving ahead on plans to create a couple of major toxic waste sites to consolidate the remaining Raymark waste in residential neighborhoods. The Raymark Superfund site is a repository for 70 years worth of toxic pollution from a local auto-parts manufacturing plant. Historically, the waste was used as fill in residential, commercial and municipal areas across town before its toxic properties were widely known.