GM outlines $3 million PCB remediation this summer

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

It was June 2023 when the Green Mountain Unified School District board heard that its high school was contaminated with Polychlorinated Biphenyls or PCBs. “Unfortunately, this will dominate our conversation for the foreseeable future, ” Facilities Director Todd Parah said at that time.

Fast forward to a June 2, 2026 special meeting of the GM board for the public to hear about a “corrective action plan” prepared by John Turner Consulting which will be carried out over the summer. The plan includes removal of PCB contaminated caulking around the building’s windows and unit ventilators, removal of floor tiles held down by contaminated adhesives and encapsulating painted areas. The plan is also to encapsulate areas where PCBs may have migrated into neighboring areas.

It’s expected that the remediation will bring levels down to a safe level without using the carbon filter air scrubbers that the school has employed since 2023. In October of that year, Parah told the board that the filters had brought the concentration of the chemical in the air to acceptable levels and that the State of Vermont would foot the bill for replacement filters.

The remediation crew will arrive on June 18 to set up and will begin working in the building on June 22. The work is scheduled to take eight weeks to complete. The cost of this work is $3 million which is provided from  $4.5 million earmarked for the full project. Those funds come from the state legislature and are administered by the Department of Environmental Conservation. DEC’s Kassandra Blanco is monitoring the project. Sterritt told the meeting that the remainder of the funds would be used for projects like remediating the soils around the perimeter of the building where PCBs have infiltrated.

According to Craig Sterritt of Turner Consulting, the work will be done “in containment” areas with negative pressure. That means the areas where work is being done will be wrapped in plastic sheeting and negative pressure pulls air into the cleaning area and keeps airborne PCBs from escaping. Sterritt also said the unit ventilators (which provide heat in the winter and outside air) will be cleaned and get replacement filters as the work was being finished in each room.

Parah, who retires at the end of June asked a number of questions about the project’s synchronization with the activities that go on in the school during the summer including cleaning, floor care and re-setting the school for the fall. Sterritt said the contractors would have that taken care of.

To Parah’s question whether the contractors would be done before school starts, Sterritt replied “100%.”

The only real surprise was the lack of public participation in a subject that has garnered a substantial amount of concern.