Department of Environmental Service. A DES representative took samples Friday.
The only problem, Ecker and Kelly said, is the odor.
"It stinks, you know. Like if you dumped horse manure," said Ron Ludwig, director of parks and recreation. "It has an odor we're not always used to in the city these days."
"We're trying to deal with educating kids, keeping them focused on learning towards the end of the year, and this is a big distraction," said.Jill LeMay, the principal, who is also concerned about a much larger pile of dirt from construction at West High School's athletic fields.
The odor is strongest when the compost is disturbed. And when the pile was dumped near the school Thursday morning, the smell and a white cloud were blown toward the school playground, where students were outside.
As people caught a whiff, teacher Wendy Black said, the school was quickly "locked down" as if in some kind of emergency drill. Black said that as students and staff beat a hasty retreat from the nasty smell, someone yelled out, "The children are getting sick!"
Exactly whether students did vomit from the odor is not clear, however
LeMay and school nurse Pat Marsh-Thorell said they did not. "There were absolutely no students who came to the school nurse's office ill," Marsh-Thorell said. She said she didn't see any students vomiting or any vomit outside.
"I'm not saying there weren't people who were feeling nauseous," Marsh-Thorell said.
Still, a group of students playing on the jungle gym after school said about eight students vomited.
"That was disgusting," recalled Jason Savoie, 10, who said he got sick "a little bit." Fellow student Dustin Edson said he came close to throwing up. "I was about to, but then my teacher told me to go get a drink of water."
Three teachers separately told The Union Leader they had been informed students had vomited, but none actually saw anyone get sick.
New England Organic's Ecker said company employees work with the material 250 days a year without ill effect. "People get sick and kids get sick," he said. "I find it highly unlikely that they got sick over this."
About noon, a reporter found the odor mildly offensive, but hardly overwhelming. But when the material was moved about 5 p.m., he found the odor difficult to bear.
Ecker described the material as "Grade A" biosolids - different from the lime-stabilized sludge, or Class B biosolids, that are sometimes applied to gravel pits and farmland under strict heaIth and safety rules. There are no rules for applying this material, he said.
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