Contaminated soil on the Park City School District’s Treasure Mountain Junior High construction site is expected to be gone within three weeks.
Soil on the site — and throughout Park City — has elevated levels of lead and arsenic from the town’s mining days. It was dug up to construct the Treasure Mountain Sports Complex, which includes soccer fields, tennis courts and a softball and baseball field where the school previously stood.
The removal plan coincides with a June 12 Department of Environmental Quality letter confirming the district can treat site soil as non-hazardous.
It also reiterates that contaminated soils exceeding federally regulated standards must be taken to a landfill. Regulators did not set a deadline for those actions but did request the district move quickly.
Superintendent Lyndsay Huntsman said DEQ officials were on site June 17 to finalize next steps.
“Once we have that summary, then we'll provide a schedule to expedite the removal of that stockpiled soil,” she said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” June 18. “We anticipate the soil will be off site within the next two to three weeks, if not sooner.”
The letter allows the district to continue operating under what’s known as a Bevill Exemption. It lifts the usual 30-day deadline to remove soil exceeding the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) threshold, a test designed to determine whether something contains hazardous material.
Originally granted in 2023, the district reapplied for the exemption in April to ensure the site still qualified for the classification. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), this type of exemption is typical for mining-generated waste.
Still, an environmental covenant imposed on the Treasure site by the EPA requires soil exceeding TCLP thresholds to be removed. According to the covenant, that removal must occur within 30 days of the conclusion of construction on the site.
The most recent Bevill Exemption letter does not impose a shorter deadline, but requests “a schedule be provided of the expeditious removal” of soil exceeding the TCLP. The state department said it can be disposed of at any Class I, II or V landfill with a letter of acceptance from the facility.
Huntsman said the district has already identified a landfill.
“It is going to go south of Provo in Fairfield,” Huntsman said. “We actually received an approval letter from that facility prior to receiving the Bevill Exemption.”
The district originally wanted to avoid hauling soil off-site as it can get expensive. Hazardous materials can also only go to specific landfills, which adds to the cost.
But Huntsman said the district built a $1.5 million soil contingency into its budget.
“We knew that going in there would be a possibility we'd encounter contaminated soil that may or may not require special handling, and that's just the nature of construction on a site with this background,” she said.
Only portions of one soil stockpile exceed the TCLP. The rest of the soil will be reburied on site, which is allowed under the environmental covenant.
Huntsman said some piles have already been removed. All are expected to be taken away within the next few weeks.
“Many of those piles have been moved and excavated to start creating a berm around the back of the baseball and softball field, so those piles have been significantly reduced over the course of the last couple of days,” she said.
Reburied soil must be covered with a six-inch cap of clean soil — defined as dirt containing 200 parts per million of lead or less.
