Williamsburg-James City County School Board Member Jim Kelly said Tuesday that reopening part of the playground at Matoaka Elementary School was a priority.
The playground was closed in early October after an underground rainwater storage tank partially collapsed and created an indention in the blacktop. Concerned, the school shut down a portion of the playground and it has remained unusable to Matoaka students since.
At Tuesday’s WJCC meeting, board members heard an update from Bob Cosby of AES Engineering who has been looking into designing a solution. Cosby said the system is functioning at about 70 percent and he suggested partially bypassing the tank to take some of the load off it so part of the playground could be reopened.
After that, Cosby suggested decommissioning the rainwater tank and replacing it with a newer system in a different location.
“How are we going to pay for this?” Board Member Jim Kelly asked.
Superintendent Steven Constantino said the matter would have to be further discussed but ultimately, he said, the answer is clear.
“Obviously this is going to come out of existing funds,” Constantino said. “We’re going to go into some discussions with the county on exactly how to do that. We may have some residual funds from projects that we could put forward, too.”
Cosby said if the project was approved, the playground could be open within a few weeks as he’s been talking to contractors about what the solution would entail and pricing for the work.
The cause of the collapse remains unclear.
“We’re still reviewing that information — the exact cause of the collapse,” Cosby said.
Right now, the collapse is thought to have been caused by one of two things: either the contractor did not install the tank to specifications or the specifications given by the manufacturer were not correct. Constantino said the county is investigating the cause.
“I think the county has a vested interest in finding out why it failed because it’s my understanding that there are a number of other systems like this throughout the county,” Cordasco said.
Constantino said Norge Elementary School also had the same system but it had been in place for much longer than the seven years it took for the Matoaka system to fail. The Norge system is also fenced in, set farther away from the building and not buried as deep.
“There’s no reason to believe there’s any issue with that system,” Constantino said.
Cosby assured the board a worst-case scenario for further collapse of the Matoaka system would be a 12-inch deep hole because of how the tank is made.
While there was some discussion of the importance of reopening the playground, there was no formal indication of further action.
