Parents fight school near site of illnesses

Wheaton district eyes land near BP complex

By Meg McSherry Breslin, Tribune staff reporter
June 16, 2006

Some Wheaton parents want to block Community Unit School District 200 from building a middle school near BP's Naperville research campus, once the site of a brain-cancer cluster.

For several years, school officials have been looking for a spot to relocate Hubble Middle School, which is in an 81-year-old former high school building in Wheaton that needs extensive renovations to be brought up to code.

Yet after word trickled out this month that the school board had settled on a site in Warrenville near the BP campus, parents began demanding meetings with school leaders.

School officials are trying to allay fears, saying preliminary environmental studies have already been done on the 18-acre site just west of Herrick Road between Warrenville and Galusha Roads.

School Supt. Gary Catalani said Thursday more studies will be done to ensure the property is environmentally safe and the district will take extra steps, including more in-depth soil and air sample testing and a review by an environmental specialist.

"We will not make any decision that in any way, shape or form will place our students, staff or community in general in any form of jeopardy," Catalani said.

He noted that many developments have gone up in the area, including hotels, single-family homes and the Naperville campus of DePaul University.

School leaders said the property they want to acquire is four-tenths of a mile from the BP campus and more than one mile from Building 503, where six employees worked who were eventually diagnosed with brain cancer.

But parents, many of them members of a group called Educate 200, continue to raise concerns. The group invited retired Amoco employee Ed Paschke to a school board meeting Wednesday. Paschke has a lawsuit pending against BP in which he contends a benign brain tumor was brought on by hazardous chemicals in his workplace.

Wheaton mother Michelle Senatore, who has spoken extensively with Paschke, said his case is clear evidence that school officials should abandon their plans.

"Why wouldn't you go above and beyond and err on the side of caution when you're dealing with children?" Senatore said. "It just makes no logical sense to put children across the street from a petrochemical facility."

The parents' group says the district should renovate Hubble Middle School. But Catalini said studies have shown that it would cost $45 million to renovate versus $35 million to build a new school, not including the cost of the land.

Besides, he said, there are still many hurdles to overcome, including a referendum measure, before the district could build. And the district would need to negotiate a purchase agreement with James McNaughton Builders, which owns the site, he said.

In 1999, researchers who conducted a three-year study of the cancer cluster at BP's Naperville research center concluded that six cases of brain cancer probably were workplace-related. Yet the scientists never could identify the source.

The six employees all worked in Building 503 during the same period in the late 1970s and early '80s. Five of the six men worked on the third floor, which has since been closed, but the remainder of the building is open and the BP campus still employs about 1,000 people, says BP spokesman Scott Dean.

Families of the six employees have sued, and their cases have been settled, said Marios Karayannis, an attorney who represented his father, Nicholas Karayannis. His father died of a glioma, the rare, malignant brain tumor common to all six workers.

Marios Karayannis represents other former BP employees, including Paschke, who contend their tumors were acquired at the research center. --

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Chicago Tribune 2006