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Date Posted: Wed. Nov 29, 2006 12:10 pm
Author: Citizen
Subject: Re: Regional #7 Land Deal UPDATE
In reply to: Dan Jerram 's message, "Regional #7 Land Deal" on Fri. Nov 17, 2006 10:18 am

Region 7 drops plan to buy farm because of pesticides

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

BY KARI BANACH

Copyright © 2006 Republican-America

WINSTED — The Region 7 Board of Education voted on Tuesday night to cancel an option to buy a farm for $1.1 million after pesticide contamination was discovered on the property.

The board wanted to buy the 100-acre Holcomb Farm at 112 Old New Hartford Road in Barkhamsted, which abuts the existing campus on the Winsted-Barkhamsted town line, for future campus expansion.

Region 7 serves students in grades 7-12 from the towns of Barkhamsted, Colebrook, New Hartford and Norfolk.

During a school district-commissioned environmental test on the farmland, traces of DDD, a chemical derivative of the pesticide DDT, turned up near a brook.

“(We) cannot justify spending that kind of money, $1.1 million, on land found to have pesticides on it,” said Board of Education Chairman Schuyler Thomson of Norfolk. “We will exercise our option to cancel the current agreement.”

The district spent about $25,000 on the $3,900-per-month option, studies on the property and legal fees since the summer when the deal with property owner Wesley Strattman, a dairy farmer, began.

School officials made their decision to stop negotiations in a closed-door session on Tuesday, and declined to comment on specifics of the reasoning behind the cancellation after the vote.

But at a Nov. 14 meeting, board members had discussed spending $50,000 on further environmental tests on the property, which Strattman did not want to pay for. The school board was unsure whether it wanted to take on the additional expense.

The tests needed to be done before the land could be utilized to determine the extent of the contamination, officials said. Strattman’s representative, Ken Kelly, did say Strattman would pay for any remediation at that meeting.

Thomson on Tuesday said that the board on Monday received correspondence from Strattman’s attorney that pushed school officials to reconsider and cancel the deal. He declined to elaborate.

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