PORTER—A University at Buffalo professor Tuesday recommended the Lewiston-Porter School Board request federal regulators enhance air monitoring on the school’s Creek Road campus.

Joseph A. Gardella Jr., a UB chemistry professor and environmental consultant to the district, outlined a series of recommendations during Tuesday’s School Board meeting that he believes the board should make to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Gardella recommended the board also request soil and sediment samples be taken from areas of the campus that school officials previously requested but the agency had declined to do.

The Corps of Engineers is responsible for the cleanup of chemical and radiological contamination at a former weapons site near the Lew-Port campus known as the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works.

The current air monitoring at Lew-Port consists of a once-a-year sample from a rooftop station. Data collected there is currently used to provide a background figure for monitoring performed off campus.

“It really gives us no information,” Gardella said of the current air testing.

Lew-Port schools sit on a section of the 7,500-acre former ordnance site, which had been known as a “buffer zone,” though review by regulators has shown the school’s property was the site of some activity, Gardella said.

The areas Gardella recommends soil sampling include two spots in wooded sections of the campus, as well as an area near an old underground water line adjacent to a drainage ditch the cuts across school property.

Corps representatives approached school officials in late May offering the opportunity to have additional sampling taken on district grounds.

The board created a subcommittee to work with Gardella on the issue, consisting of board President Keith Fox, as well as members Robert Weller and April Fideli, as well as district staff.

Gardella told the board “it’s sort of astounding” that the corps “suddenly has resources” for the work.

Corps officials have requested the school submit its requests by Aug. 14.

Gardella and some UB students performed a scan for radiological contamination on the Lew-Port campus in 2003.