Almost a year after the LaBrae Board of Education was cited for burying construction demolition debris at the site of the former LaBrae High School on West Market Street, workers are sifting through the material and removing parts of it.

Frank Migliozzi, director of environmental health for the county health department, said R.P. Carbone Construction Co., the Cleveland management company that oversaw the school demolition, was in charge of the project.

Debra Roth, a member of the LaBrae Board of Education and president of the Leavittsburg environmental group "Our Lives Count," said the details of the cleanup were hammered out during a dispute resolution that was conducted with the assistance of an arbitrator in January or February.

The parties agreed that the LaBrae school district would pay $10,500 of the cleanup and the Ohio School Facilities Commission would pay the remaining $24,500, Roth said. The commission is the public body that provided $20 million of the $30 million spent to build schools for the district and remove the old ones.

Dave Sugar Excavation of Petersburg, the company that carried out the demolition for Carbone, received the contract to remove the debris, Roth said, adding that the company was the lowest bidder on the job.

Long time to resolve

Migliozzi said the health department has been in discussions with the parties involved in the demolition project since problems with the debris were discovered last May, and it has taken this long to resolve the matter. He said the project also was delayed by the cold weather.

Migliozzi said the contractor is required to remove all of the wood and metal parts found in the soil and anything else found there that doesn't qualify as clean, hard fill.

Two health department sanitarians are spending a great deal of time at the site inspecting the work, Migliozzi said.

A worker at the site said he was working as a subcontractor for Carbone and had put in about four or five days there so far. He estimated the debris removal would take another week.

Migliozzi said he didn't know who was responsible for paying for the corrective measures.