West Greene School District continues assessments of collapsed retaining wall

The West Greene School District continues to pick up the pieces after a retaining wall, built adjacently behind the new elementary school along a large hillside, collapsed during a night in early November.

The partnership of the project architect, The Hayes Design Group, and the construction manager, URS Corp., started building the wall two springs ago as a part of the new elementary school project.

The retaining wall, which cost upwards of a million dollars, was built to hold the soil on the steep hillside and prevent consistent eroding. The only thing separating that and the new school was an area for faculty to park.

Its somewhat of an inconvenience because Im asking nobody to park behind their for safety issues, said Thelma Szarell, school district superintendent. We were expecting it to be paved by this time, but it would be terribly inconvenient if we had students and staff in the building.

However, many concerns dealing with the construction and design of the retaining wall were addressed in many school board meetings prior to the collapse occurring. Many cracks and separations were visibly noticeable in the wall for several weeks leading up to the incident, including at a meeting the night prior to the collapse.

The school board remained persistent on fixing issues brought up at previous meetings, some of which being the installation of drains beneath the wall and gray clay soil behind the wall.

However, despite the efforts made by the school district, the wall that stretches over 700 feet and over 30 feet high, crumbled in the center, ultimately sending several large blocks to the ground. Thankfully, some of the wall remained intact after the collapse.

The district hired independent engineers to assess the issue and what went wrong to cause the collapse. It has yet to be determined what resulted in the destruction; however, once that issue is resolved the district plans on developing a plan to correct the problem.

After finalizing a proposal to continue with the project on in August 2011, the new elementary school will combine both Graysville Elementary and Springhill-Freeport Elementary to a unified location, next to the senior high school and middle school.

It will benefit the school district tremendously, Szarell said. In the long run it will be more cost efficient. We will be able to have new programming done in the elementary and it keeps the kids from being isolated.

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West Greene School District continues assessments of collapsed retaining wall