West Virginia school will remain open for now amid toxic groundwater fears

PADEN CITY, W.Va. (AP) — A small West Virginia school will remain open for now after a court temporarily blocked an effort to relocate classes due to the town’s contaminated groundwater being added to a national cleanup priority list.

Last month, Wetzel County Schools Superintendent Cassandra R. Porter announced that students, faculty and staff at Paden City High School would be relocated to existing schools in nearby New Martinsville when classes resume in August.

However, attorneys representing a group of those students, faculty and staff filed a petition this week seeking to block the move, according to news outlets. The petition argued that the federal government did not recommend closing the school because there was no health risk and that closing the school would “devastate” the community.

“Based upon the petition, there appears to be no emergency, the status of Paden City as a Superfund Site has been known for many years and these conditions are not unforeseen or unanticipated,” Circuit Judge Richard Wilson wrote in his Friday ruling.

Wilson ordered that the school’s teachers, staff and faculty be reinstated and that the school immediately reopen.

A hearing has been scheduled on July 25 to determine if the school will remain open.

In March 2022, federal environmental officials placed Paden City’s groundwater on the list of Superfund cleanup sites. Untreated groundwater contained the solvent tetrachloroethylene at levels higher than the federally allowed limit.

Tetrachloroethylene is widely used by dry cleaners. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the contaminated area is around the site of a dry cleaner that closed more than two decades ago in the Ohio River town of about 2,500 residents.

According to the EPA, tetrachloroethylene is a likely carcinogen and can harm the nervous system, liver, kidneys and reproductive system.

Paden City is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Pittsburgh.