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Show ' " "06:-B7 TXON , ,-.c IT AH l-'Kb-ii ' 3enim. SALT LAKL UTi. - M I i i' ! Mi i . Vol.107, No. 552 Sections, 34 Pages Thursday, February 26, 1987 111 Town Race teamsters Lee Beebe, racing for Team Dynastar, helped pull his team Pro Vet division at Monday's Town Race slalom at the Park results can be found on page Bl of today's Park Record. Fireman Without Jan Freeman, secretary to the city manager, it appears the $2,250 Sister City International grant might have gone unclaimed. According Accor-ding to Ellen Patmore, project coordinator coor-dinator for the Practical Training Expierence project of SCI, the town of Park City was awarded a grant they were unaware they had applied for. There was good reason for the confusion. con-fusion. No one at city hall did apply for the grant, per se. Dr.Tony Mitchell, Mit-chell, former school district superintendent, had started the ball rolling before he resigned to take a job in Salt Lake City. Mitchell, along with former Park City resident, Sheri Johnson had applied for funds to allow young adults to travel to the town's sister city, Courchevel, France. The grant process was started and then no one apparently followed up on it. Jan Freeman, in going through some routinue office mail, Grant puts sister cities program into by HEIDI WEST Record staff w riter The exciting thought of a winter schussing the French Alps was the start of a sometimes frustrating experience ex-perience for Sheri Johnson. She was with the ski patrol at Park City Ski Resort when her boss asked her if she might be interested in spending some time in Courcheval, France Park City's sister city. "Of course I said yes," said Sheri with a laugh. Sheri took the information her boss had collected, but was told she was pretty much on her own. Although he had been "trying to get an exchange going for years," red tape and excessive paperwork in arranging ar-ranging work visas had resulted in a pretty dismal exchange record until then. He was unwilling to get that involved in-volved again, so it was up to Sheri. Park City and Courcheval had a thriving student exchange program going, but in early 1986 when Sheri got interested, there was no "trainee" or work-related exchangeat ex-changeat least not from Park City's end. There were a couple of French exchange workers already in Park City, but without grant money or city sponsorship, Parkites had yet to make it to Courcheval. INDE Ca!:r':r ......... ' ' ll'-'.' ft"-. i X&F&Z ' r:- "TSS&sS? findsthe Ellen Patmore is the coordinator coor-dinator for the grant monies for Sister Cities International. In-ternational. Sheri made a couple of phone calls back East to the same program which made student trades and the French visitors work furlow possible, possi-ble, Sister Cities International (SCI). It was suggested she get in touch with then Park City School District Superintendent Tony Mitchell, Mit-chell, and that together they write a grant proposal to SCI. They did, or actually, says Sheri, she did, in April 1986. Within a couple cou-ple of months, the grant application was approved, and the exchange worker program in Park City was funded for $2,500. A stipulation of using us-ing the money was that the city become involved in "helping us raise funds," said Sheri. The program "needed three people peo-ple to work," and although there were already two others from Park City involved in the exchange, Sheri said they were unwilling to "put any work into it." They would go if Sheri arranged the visas and the sponsors. She looked for a more enthusiastic duo to accompany her, and found the answer in two close friends, Laurent Bonzaglou and Christy Chambers. "I wanted Laurent for his French background," she said, "and Christy adds exuberance to the group." Both "were all for it," said Sheri. They planned their trip for late fall Netl Palumbo to the number slot in the City Ski Area. Complete discovered a press release from SCI and called to inquire about work cards and the like for both traveling and visiting young adults. It was then she was told not only could the organization help, but there was this grant money set aside for the town to use. The money, said Patmore, was to be used specifically for Americans going to work in Courchevel. "The grant was one of twenty awarded nationwide," said Patmore. Pat-more. "The community seemed really involved and the opportunity for young people to work in a professional profes-sional capacity seemed to match, ski industry to ski industry." For the past few months Jan Freeman worked with Patmore and contingents from both Park City and Courchevel to coordinate all the details for the exchanges. "She has really helped pull the whole thing together," said Patmore. Pat-more. or early winter and Sheri immersed herself in French classes over the summer. But a series of misunderstandings resulted in lots of frustration for Sheri and an eventually even-tually cancelled trip. When Sheri returned to Salt Lake where she now attends the University Universi-ty of Utah, she found Tony Mitchell had been trying to contact her. A national na-tional conference of Sister Cities was taking place, and one of the Parkites had to be there. At her own expense, Sheri was on a plane to New Orleans fewer than 12 hours after she got Mitchell's call. Shortly after she returned to Utah, Mitchell left the Park City School District for a job in Salt Lake, and with him went the exchange program's pro-gram's institutional sponsor. "Tony left it in our hands," said Sheri. City sponsorship was now more important than ever, and Mitchell told Sheri not to worry he had taken care of that. Sheri and her two friends waited in limbo for the city council to come out in support of them, start a fundraiser, arrange for visas, do anything to help. But none came. They took as a bad sign, and pulled out of their planned trip. By See Courcheval A2 funds Classifieds ........... B13 Cc::""s ............. A14 EPA visits Prospector by HEIDI WEST Record staff writer Well, it wasn't really the first time EPA has come to Park City, and the EPA Denver Superfund chief who met with city and Utah health department officials last week didn't exactly set foot on Prospector, but the chief, David Shaller, did get his first look at the tailings site in "a 15 to 20-minute tour" by car Feb. 20. Shaller and a dozen other officials from the three agencies were meeting for a third time to hammer out the exact nature of a work plan introduced by EPA (the Environmental En-vironmental Protection Agency) in January. The plan will guide a "comprehensive" data-taking effort initialed by EPA to determine whether or not a health risk exists at the site. Tie agencies, especially Park City staff, have had problems with the work plan since it was unveiled In January. In particular, Park City building inspector Ron Ivie, the city's technical representative on the inter-agency group, and Assis- tant City Attorney Craig Smith asked ask-ed that data collection be tied to useable results. "We're wasting time if we're not addressing the health issue," noted Smith. Ivie put it another way. "We want a definition defini-tion of what we're looking for," he said at the meeting Friday, "so if we find it we'll know." Shaller agreed the city's was a "legitimate request," and is meeting with federal health officials this week to pin them down on how each bit of data they have said they need will be used to determine the health hazards at Prospector. For instance, said Shaller, there was some question on how samples of carpet dust would be interpreted. While EPA can take the samples, Shaller said it was "up to the ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry an outgrowth of the Centers for Disease Control funded by the Superfund bill and .designated responsible for deter-miniming deter-miniming fcjalth effects of hazar-, d0us-TrastKatSuperfund sites) to link those samples to exposure to hazards." Shaller plans to find out specifically how ATSDR will make that link in his meeting with them this week. Ivie also expressed his confusion at just what the federal government was going to consider "harmful" at Prospector. Would metals be considered con-sidered dangerous at some particular par-ticular quantitative level, and if so, what was that level, asked Ivie. A representative from Ecology and Environment, one of the contractors con-tractors EPA uses on Superfund sites and the firm which, according to Park City, may have botched data collection initially on the Prospector site in 1985, answered by explaining if he was looking for a single contaminant con-taminant like lead, it would have to be 10 times more concentrated "downgradient" of the site than above it to be considered hazardous. If he was dealing with multiple contaminants, con-taminants, a concentration of three times greater downgradient from the site would be considered toxic. This "policy" had been in effect for I . t 1 L sL r V iAp' WW From left, exchange workers Laurent Bonzaglou, Phillipe Christy Chambers, Sheri Johnson, and Sister Cities official the picture is exchange worker Phillipe Obert. Education ', . . . ; . ...... A12 Legate B9 Entertainment ..... ...B6 Letters A15 two years, he said. The Prospector mine tailings site was proposed for Superfund listing after information collected by Ecology and Environment from phone conversations was plugged into in-to the official Superfund "Hazard Ranking System." The Prospector site scored above 28.5, the number needed for Superfund listing. Park City found errors when it examined ex-amined what Ecology and Environment Environ-ment had done, and opposed the listing in November 1986. The site was de-listed in January 1987, but only because Sen. Jake Gam had legislatively orchestrated it. Park City has yet to hear from the Washington office of EPA on its appeal ap-peal of the facts. Assistant Park City Attorney Craig Smith, who prepared the city's November appeal, asked EPA to somehow ensure Park City was not prevented from accessing data taken at Prospector as it had been in the past. Shaller responded that the "rulemaking" procedure, which had kept information from the city before, was "beyond EPA" and had to be followed. But Smith requested all data be on the table and available to everyone involved before rulemaking began. "It's not a matter mat-ter of lack of trust. We trust you," Smith assured Shaller. Ivie was apparently not so sure, and expressed his doubts about EPA's choice of a contractor in Ecology and Environment. Brent Bradford, director of Utah's bureau of solid and hazardous waste, told the Record he would be "meeting with city folks" this week to discuss EPA's choice of consultants. "We can avoid the problem by having our folks on site doing quality assurance," said Bradford, even Air tests at Richardson Flat show 'substantial' releases 5 Strangely enough, or maybe not strangely at ail. the subject of Richardson Flat came up at a meeting held Feb. 20 in Park City to talk about Prospector mine tailings. When Park City Building Inspector In-spector Ron Ivie demanded to know what EPA (the Environmental En-vironmental Protection Agency) had found in its air monitoring at Richardson last summer, consultants con-sultants from the firms of Ecology and Environment admitted admit-ted "there were substantial releases, well above HRS (hazard ranking system the program used by EPA to determine deter-mine whether a site qualifies for Superfund listing) criteria." Ivie and Utah health officials present at the meeting said the soil at Richardson Flat, located roughly at the junction of SR 248 and US 40 (Keetley Junction), was finer grained than the sand at Prospector, so it prosed an environmental en-vironmental hazard that Prospector Pro-spector did not. full swing though he admitted it might be cheaper if the state actually performed per-formed the analysis. The agencies reached general agreement that the first step in implementing' im-plementing' the plan will be to monitor indoor air. Although state health staff said they knew how to operate the monitoring equipment, EPA was the only agency present which actually had that equipment. ' . There was some disagreement among state air quality experts and technical stall from Ecology and Environment on the number of days indoor air sampling would be needed, need-ed, and on the best location lor a background air quality monitor The EPA plan to take indoor data over 15 days would cost 'between Summi and $100,000," said the consultants. Mor-itoring continuously over a three-month period, like state health was pushing "to catch worst case conditions," would multiply that cost accordingly, they added. The agency staff did not discuss the ground and surface water study EPA is proposing to share with the U.S. Geological Survey and Utah health department sometime in the future. Instead, they concentrated on technical details of air quality monitoring because, said Shaller, it will begin as early as March. Shaller hopes the data collection effort is finished "before the calendar calen-dar year," and claims ATSDR's pronouncement pro-nouncement on the health risks at Prospector "will be in position earlier than that " Based on past experience. Ivie has said he "doesn't expect any results for three years" from the EPA study, but Shaller just doesn't see it that way. "I don't buy the three-year three-year study period," he said "I got other things to do." The hazard ranking system incorporates in-corporates scores on air, water and soil pathways. Although the air portion of the testing completed com-pleted in late summer and fall of this year did indeed indicate "a significant release," according to Denver EPA Superfund chief David Shallar, it doesn't yet mean Richardson will be proposed propos-ed for the Superfund list. Samples of water and soil were taken more than a year ago, said Shallar, so the EPA "now has a complete three-way pathway" to analyze. The water data were plugged into the hazard rank.ng system, but only as a "back of the envelope" calculation. As Shallar remembers, the water score "was significantly lrwer than 28.5," the point totai needed to trigger listing as a Superfund site. The air data will be incorporated incor-porated with the water and soil information, and EPA will take the next four to six weeks to carefully, this time, score Richardson Flat. Vasinatainer, Pascal Benoit, Ellen Patmore. Missing from Sports......... Bl Television ... ... . : . . . ; B12 Vil: i iS IT 4 if tit i |