[CPEO-BIF] Woonsocket (RI) school site

[Lenny Siegel]

Hamlet Avenue site eyed for 2 new schools

Experts will evaluate the 20-acre property -- which needs a massive 
cleanup -- and report late next month to the Building Committee.


BY CYNTHIA NEEDHAM
Providence Journal
August 31, 2006

WOONSOCKET -- The city is considering an eleventh-hour proposal to build 
two new middle schools at the Hamlet Avenue mill complex that twice has 
been ravaged by fires in recent years.

The latest plan would call for tearing down all remaining buildings at 
the 20-acre site and constructing the two schools to form a middle 
school campus.

City officials say the site emerged as a last-minute alternative when a 
long-stalled deal that would have seen a light industrial and office 
space park on the Hamlet Avenue site began to look as though it might 
fall apart.

...

Mathews acknowledges that for a site to be used for education purposes, 
the cleanup standards are much higher than if the area were to be used 
as, say, a parking lot, but he emphasized that the Hamlet complex does 
not appear any more contaminated than other former mills. It's just that 
at 20 acres, it is bigger than most mill sites, which could drive up 
cleanup costs.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.projo.com/ri/woonsocket/content/projo_20060831_wms31.31f0255.html
-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel at cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org