Whitefish Center to discuss soil contamination

The Whitefish School District’s Center for Sustainability and Entrepreneurship discovered last summer that topsoil acquired from a regional supplier was contaminated with herbicides.

Ultimately, instead of laboriously removing the soil and other materials from the garden beds the center worked with high school chemistry teacher Todd Spangler and his students to test a variety of remediation approaches.

On Monday, May 13, the center will host a public meeting to share results from the students’ experiments and discuss what the next steps might be to address the remaining contamination.

The first signs of trouble in the raised garden beds included curling and cupping leaves, recalled Taylor Wilmot, facilities and grounds coordinator for the Center for Sustainability and Entrepreneurship at Whitefish High School.

She approached Spangler about tackling the problem as a class project for his advanced chemistry students.

Wilmot said in mid-April that preliminary results from the students’ remediation techniques revealed the garden beds still contained herbicides but that some approaches appeared to have been more effective than others.

The meeting is scheduled to begin Monday at 5:30 p.m. and end at 7 p.m. The center’s address is 1141 E. Fourth St. in Whitefish.