CANFIELD — Groundwater sampled in three places Feb. 14 on the west side of the Canfield High School property near the wrestling / weight room and parking lot showed no elevated chemical levels, according to a document on the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s website Tuesday.

August Mack, the company handling cleanup and testing associated with the July chemical spill at the Material Sciences Corp. steel processing plant just west of the high school, submitted the 213-page report dated March 31 to the Ohio EPA.

The sampling done Feb. 14, 15 and 17 also checked for soil vapor in several locations on the school property, but all of those samples came back negative for high levels of hazardous chemicals.

The locations tested were parking lots throughout the high school complex. The testing was for TCE and several other chemicals, including vinyl chloride, according to the report.

Likewise, sub-slab floor vapor testing at the high school wrestling / weight room building, concession stand and an area southwest of the track field all came back negative for high levels of TCE and several other chemicals, including vinyl chloride, the report states.

A section of the report called “vapor intrusion results” states that although certain air samples “could not be collected due to canister malfunctions, additional sampling is not warranted.”

It stated the reason is because of other results that did not show chemical levels above allowable amounts, referred to in the new document as U.S EPA Groundwater Protection Standard (GWPS).

The testing did show the chemical Trichloroethylene (TCE) above allowable levels not far away from the high school parking lot, just east of the Mill Creek MetroParks Bikeway. It’s an area where elevated TCE levels also were detected in earlier sampling.

The report shows that a groundwater sample taken from the area just east of the bike trail Feb. 18 near a path from the school parking lot to the bike trail had a reading many times higher than the allowable level, and a groundwater sample taken just south of there had readings a little above the allowable level.

Groundwater samples from several other locations alongside the bike trail showed the presence of elevated levels of several other chemicals, such as arsenic, chromium and lead.

JULY SPILL

In July, MSC carried out a regularly scheduled cleaning of its equipment at the plant, which “appeared to dislodge dark, brown process water … that contained cyanide and metals,” a Dec. 12, August Mack report states. The fluids got into a “previously abandoned drainage pipe” and then into a ditch that runs from the rear corner of the building north along the Mill Creek MetroParks Bikeway, the Dec. 12 report stated.

The liquid was noticed by a person on the bikeway and reported, resulting in a response by Cardinal Joint Fire District, the Mahoning County HazMat team and Ohio EPA, according to a fire report. Lots of cleanup work has been done in the spill area and testing was performed to determine the extent of the contamination.

The results caused the Ohio EPA to order additional testing in Sawmill Creek and on the high school property. The new report appears not to provide any new testing results from the creek.

A MSC document in the EPA database states that “TCE is a volatile chlorinated solvent that can represent a significant risk of vaporization to indoor air or any building / structure above the contaminated / impacted groundwater.”

When Aaron Young, MetroParks executive director, was asked Tuesday about the new report and the elevated chemical readings near the Bikeway, he stated in an email: “Mill Creek MetroParks continues to follow the lead of and remains in contact with the Ohio EPA as it relates to this issue. We continue to provide and allow the necessary access to the affected areas in an effort to assist with both the testing and remediation.”

A spokesperson for the Ohio EPA stated Tuesday that the office would not be able to provide a comment on the new testing until at least today.

In a Tuesday email, Canfield Superintendent Joe Knoll said he plans to speak briefly at today’s 6 p.m. board meeting about the testing results.

The Canfield Board of Education authorized the hiring of consultant Intertek PSI of Cleveland to provide technical assistance to Knoll to help him interpret the technical information associated with the investigation of the MSC leak and the testing being done as a result of the leak.