By James Lomuscio
When Westport Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon went before the Board of Finance last month, there was a sense of urgency—three old metal, underground storage tanks needed to be replaced with fortified plastic ones lest they leak causing environmental disaster. 
Ellliott Landon: got wrong information. Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
The finance board responded by approving $279,000 to replace them, even recommending that the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) authorize bonding for each 10,000-gallon tank.
There was only one, problem, a big one. Landon and Nancy Harris, assistant superintendent for business, had the wrong information. The tanks at Long Lots Elementary School and Coleytown Middle School were already made of plastic. Coleytown Elementary School is the only one with a metal tank.
Landon says Gary Martin, the school system’s director of facilities, had never informed him nor Harris the tanks were plastic, even though Martin had received an insurance report to that effect back in 2008.
Martin, Landon said Thursday, was “on a personal leave, an indefinite personal leave.”
“Subsequent to that request and approval by the Board of Finance, Nancy and I learned through our insurance company that in 2008 a report had been issued to our Director of Facilities that provided new and critical information about the tanks,” Landon wrote in a letter first presented to the Board of Education at its budget meeting held this morning at the Westport Public Library.
“Neither Nancy nor I had known of the findings in that report,” he added. “Once we learned of the existence of the report, we withdrew our request for funding that was scheduled to be made to the RTM.”
Since then, Landon said he has reviewed the situation with Absolute Tank Removal (ATR) , a company the school board has used in the past for removals and tank repairs. The result: three options.
The first is a plan to request about half of what had been previously approved—$136,850—from the finance board.
According to Landon, the cost breakdown is as follows: $13,350 to bring the Long Lots tank into compliance with state Department of Environmental Protection storage tank and PCB guidelines without removing it; $12,200 to do the same at Coleytown Middle School; and $91,300 to replace the 22-year-old metal tank at Coleytown Elementary.
Additionally, ATR cited an urgent need to repair the piping to the underground tank at Staples High School at a cost of $20,000.
Another option would be to just repair or upgrade the Coleytown Elementary tank with an alarm system for the cost of $20,700, making the new budget request $66,250.
Landon, however, urged its replacement.
“Additionally, the CES underground storage tank is located in a vital water aquifer and, at most, this 22-year-old underground, oil storage tank had a life expectancy of no more than an additional eight years,” he said.
Landon also left the door open to a third option he said he is prepared to discuss at the school board’s public hearing scheduled for Monday.
“I continue to believe, however, that because of the age of the tanks at CES, CMS and LLS that all three of those underground tanks should be removed currently in the interest of environmental safety,” he said.
“It’s penny wise and pound foolish,” he said before the start of this morning’s board meeting. “They’re plastic, simple plastic, not reinforced plastic. I think it’s foolhardy not to replace all three because they’re not double walled.”
Has anyone considered the cost of converting to gas?
It’s possible for that volume of use the gas co. would cooperate with a line extension if it is not already available.
All the Westport schools have capability of using either oil or natural gas.
Great lets get rid of the tanks!
Unless of course the schools are considered a last refuge in case of an emergency.
I still think it should be explored.
The energy contracts negotiated are for a specific cost per BTU (British Thermal Unit), irrespective of the type of energy (fuel oil or natural gas). Having dual fuels allows us to take advantage of whichever energy source is least expensive. Having a single energy source would put the schools and taxpayers at a disadvantage when it comes to negotiating energy contracts.
Due to the cost of fuel oil, we have been burning natural gas exclusively this year. However, other years we burn fuel oil exclusively. We heat our schools with whatever is the most cost effective energy source available.
Dual fuel was last decade’s trade. We need to instead be forward looking. Compared to natural gas, heating oil and crude products generally face stiff headwinds. For starters, any remotely reasonable climate change legislation will most likely make heating oil uncompetitive to natural gas.
But we don’t even need legislation given the substantial build-out in natural gas infrastructure, bot in delivery and in production and the difficulty of securing new crude oil. While there are issues with shale-derived natural gas, they pale in comparison to the issues now manifest with deep-water drilling. Then, there is the fact that oil is 70% foreign versus natural gas which is 90% domestic which brings the value of the US dollar into play. All of these issues bring the current price differential between the two fuels to near historic highs. Sure the price picture can change, but we need to legitimately ask whether or not the money would be better spent elsewhere.
It would be ill-advised and illogical to not consider alternative uses for this capital. With ARRA and CT State dollars allocated for newer investments such as solar power, better windows and insulation, and combined heat and power, we’d be wise at the very least to cost out these energy alternatives at our schools to see if in fact we could save more money by dispensing with heating oil and allocating the capital in forward-looking technologies.