The EPA on Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010, released draft voluntary guidelines to help communities site schools outside of known pollution zones. The new draft voluntary guidelines will give local communities tools to help them consider environmental health issues in establishing school site selection criteria and in conducting effective environmental reviews of potential school sites. The draft guidelines recommend involving the public in the site selection process from the beginning to help ensure community support for these decisions.

The draft school siting guidelines are being made available for public comment for 90 days. Comments will be accepted until 4 pm EST on Feb. 18, 2011. Grabbing a copy might be helpful not just for those planning to build schools, since it provides a pretty general checklist for siting commercial and residential facilities (especially those that will have children on site), although that is not its purpose.

According to the agency release, more than 1,900 new schools serving approximately 1.2 million children and costing more than $13 billion opened in the 2008-2009 school year. The agency noted that failure to properly take environmental siting concerns into account have caused some schools to close, or been forced to pay for remediation.

SOURCE: EPA press release