State officials say illegal dumping found at Brentwood school

State environmental officials said they are investigating a dumping site discovered on a lot next to a Brentwood middle school.

The 5-acre site next to North Middle School and Brentwood State Park on College Road was to be renovated as a soccer field for a nonprofit to use, Brentwood Superintendent Richard Loeschner said. The land is part of the school property but fenced off and unused by the district.

It is now filled with construction and demolition debris discovered last summer. Based on soil samplings conducted so far, the fill is not believed to pose a health or environmental hazard, said Basil Seggos, commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He said the samples contained no indication of hazardous waste or “serious contaminants.”

Officials are waiting for more test results to confirm what materials are present, said Sean Mahar, the DEC’s assistant commissioner of public affairs.

Investigators are trying to determine when the material was dumped, where it came from, and who is responsible for cleaning it up as part of a larger crackdown on illegal dumping of construction debris across Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley, Seggos said. State officials declined to say how much material was dumped on the lot, citing the continuing investigation.

“We’re aggressively pursuing full enforcement of the matter,” Seggos said.

The school district has never used the grass field and has had an agreement since the 1970s allowing the Brentwood Youth Soccer Club to use it, Loeschner said. The field became uneven after years of not being used. The parcel is separated from the rest of the middle school property by shrubbery, trees and a chain-link fence. It is next to the school’s athletic fields and the state park’s soccer fields, and across the street from Suffolk County Community College’s Michael J. Grant campus.

In the spring of 2017, the district agreed to let the soccer club level, reseed and add topsoil to the field at the club’s expense, said Loeschner, who was named superintendent in June.

District officials inspected the site over the summer after noticing there was more fill than they believed was needed for the repairs and spotted construction debris, he said.

The district then contacted the DEC, cut off the club’s access to the grounds and secured the lot with a fence, he said. Security has checked the site weekly to ensure the fence, which separates the lot from the state park and a strip of county land, is secure.

“It is important to highlight no one is in any danger at this point,” Loeschner said. “We’re really doing everything we can.”

The soccer club’s president, Violette Smith and other officers, did not respond to requests for comment.

The club, which plays on fields at Brentwood State Park next to the school property, organizes soccer tournaments, travel teams and trainings, according to its website. The club was started in 1974 and serves children from preschool through high school, according to posts on its Facebook page. The number of children currently in the club was not available.

Loeschner said the club and school officials cannot do anything about the site until the DEC finishes its investigation. North Middle School has about 1,100 students in sixth through eighth grades, according to state education data.

The district did not send any written notices to parents about the dumping site, although the school board has discussed the issue at several public meetings, Loeschner said.

Liz Cordero, a vice president of the Brentwood High School Parent Teacher Student Association, said taxpayers and parents are “being kept in the dark.”

“We’re all taxpayers and we deserve to have answers,” said Cordero, 55, who has had three children graduate from the district and a fourth is a high school senior. “We really do need to find out why it’s there and if it’s hazardous, and if so, why isn’t it being dealt with appropriately?”

John Spadaro, a Brentwood Fire District commissioner whose daughter graduated from North Middle last year, said he became concerned about the site over the summer when it appeared to have been elevated by about five feet.

“I said, ‘Something’s fishy. This is going to be another Roberto Clemente Park,’ ” Spadaro said, referring to the Brentwood park where more than 40,000 tons of contaminated materials were illegally dumped between 2013 and 2014.

Spadaro, also a Brentwood Fire Department volunteer firefighter, said he approached a construction worker at the dumping site, who told him he was helping to build a soccer field. The illegal dumping at Roberto Clemente Park was carried out while the soccer fields there were being refurbished, Islip Town officials have said in court filings. The site was one of four properties harmed in a dumping scheme that led to convictions against five people, including two town parks officials. The park reopened this summer after years of remediation and construction.

Islip Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter declined through town spokeswoman Caroline Smith to comment about the middle school dumping site, citing that the property is not under the town’s control.

By Rachelle Blidner

rachelle.blidner@newsday.com@rachelleblidner

Rachelle Blidner covers Suffolk County government, politics and breaking news.