River Valley Middle and High School - Marion, OH, USA - Former Schools on Waymarking.com

River Valley is one of four county school districts in Marion County, Ohio. The original middle and high schools that are located here have been closed since 2003, after new buildings were built. Currently these buildings are unoccupied, and the parking lots are being used to store mulch. I visited here in May of 2007. At that time nothing was being stored on the grounds. Since the mulch was placed here, concrete barriers with "No Trespassing" signs were placed to block all of the entrances. It can still be viewed from the road, or across the road at the Verizon Communications building.

These schools were built in the 1960's. The land that they occupy was the eastern end of what was once a military complex and POW camp during WWII. In the late 1990's a former student of the River Valley schools noticed a pattern of higher than normal cases of Leukemia among students who attended these schools. Once word started to spread it became a popular story in the media nationwide, though most media coverage was just local. The Ohio EPA was called in to investigate, and found that the land upon which the schools were build was actually used as a waste dump by the U.S. Army when they occupied the land. According to some reports as many as 75 different chemicals were found at hazardous levels around the school.

One finding specifically helped to make the public aware of how the land was formerly used. Prior to the investigations here most didn't realize that the area was once an Army base and POW camp. One of the OEPA's finding was high levels of arsenic in the soil. They discovered a railroad track used to run though there. Where they were finding the arsenic was a location where German POWs were unloaded from trains during WWII. Once off the train they were sprayed with a delousing agent which contained arsenic.

These events pretty much divided the community. Some felt that not enough was being done to correct the problem, while others felt there was no real problem at all. Although many of the EPA's and Army Corps of Engineer's official reports early on found no problems, further pressure by the community found possible cover-ups and mistruths about the original reports. Subsequent studies found many issues at the site.

Eventually when it was realized that the site couldn't be cleaned up safely for students, the OEPA, River Valley School District, and Army Corps of Engineers came to an agreement to relocate the schools. As a result, the OEPA convinced Ohio's government to give 8.9 million dollars to the school district, which went to build a new high school, new middle school, and 2 new elementary schools in areas away from this spot. The Federal Government gave an additional fifteen million dollars to clean up the site. Clean up began in 2004.

There is a little information out there still regarding the issues here. They can be found at Ohiocitizen.org, the Ohio EPA, and Ohio History Central.

Address: Columbus Sandusky Rd. Marion, Ohio USA 43302 Web Site: [Web Link]

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