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Anyone eager to submit objections to the release of bond money related to the Wilkes-Barre Area School District high school project will have to wait until after the November election. The state Department of Environmental Protection has rescheduled an informal conference to hear such objections for Nov. 7.
The issue centers on a bond payment by Jeddo-Highland Coal Co. for the site where the school is being built in Plains Township. Jeddo Highland worked the land under a mining permit from the state. Those permits include a reclamation plan for the site, and requiring paying or a bond sufficient to cover reclamation work left undone.
Jeddo Highland sold 77 acres of the land to the school district for construction of the new school, making the mining permit no longer applicable. The district’s construction project falls under a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permit, which regulated the development and construction of the new school to ensure all environmental regulations are followed.
Jeddo Highland did not complete the reclamation plan spelled out by the mining permit, and the responsibility now falls to the school district. Under state law, Jeddo Highland was eligible to ask for — and did ask for — release of bond money totaling $267,587.
By law, DEP had to run a classified ad announcing the request. Robin Shudak, a candidate for Wilkes-Barre Area School Board who has since announced she will not take the seat even if elected, sought a hearing on the release request. DEP declined the hearing but agreed to an informal conference on Oct. 3. The conference was postponed “to allow for notice to be published and to allow for additional public participation” according to a letter sent last month from DEP official Thomas Boretski Jr. A new date was not given.
On Monday Shudak sent the Times Leader a copy of letter from Boretski setting the hearing for Nov. 7 at 10 a.m., at the Plains Township Municipal Building.
Shudak also posted the letter on Facebook, commenting that the new date is “conveniently rescheduled to after the election.”
A staunch opponent of the district plan to consolidate three existing high schools into the new building, Shudak ran for School Board in the primary election and won on the Republican ticket. But on Oct. 4 she delivered a letter to the Luzerne County Election Bureau saying she is withdrawing “from consideration for School Director.”
By that time it was too late to remover her name from the ballot, but in the letter she said she “will not accept the position if the votes tally in my favor.” She gave no reason for the withdrawal in the letter, but did post a Facebook comment that “I cannot, in good conscience, be part of the WBA High School Construction.”
Estimated at a cost of $121 million, work on the building is now well underway.
Critics, including Shudak, contend the site is unsafe due to the mining done there and coal ash dumped there. Some critics have argued that the district is paying the cost of reclamation when it should have been completed by Jeddo-Highland, but district officials counter that their excavations would have undone some reclamation work and changed the plan, which primarily calls for sealing any unsafe material under concrete or paving, or to put a state-required minimum of clean top soil over it.
In his letter, Boretski notes the conference is limited to objections regarding the bond release.