CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The anticipated cost of the new Herbert Hoover High School will be well above what was originally projected, but Kanawha County Schools Superintendent Tom Williams said that’s not a surprise.
“Four years ago, prices were one thing and then covid came along and now they’re something else,” Williams said Monday.
FEMA agreed to pay for most of the new school following the June 2016 flood destroyed the former Herbert Hoover building. Students have been attending classes in dozens of portable classrooms on the property of Elkview Middle School since the fall of 2016.
The initial projected cost for replacement was $73 million but that was determined more than three years ago. Today, adjusted for the current prices of building materials and labor, the price tag is at $103 million. FEMA will still pay the promised 90% of the cost, even with the increased costs but the state has changed how it will pay the other 10%, Williams said.
“The state can’t do between the $73 and $103 (million),” Williams said. “FEMA is still paying 90%. The state will pay 10% on the first $73 million and we’ll pay 10% on the remaining balance,” Williams said.
Williams said they worked out an agreement with the state.
“As prices go up the cost of the project goes up. When that happened, the state doesn’t have the money they needed and we got together and said we would pay that other 10%,” Williams explained.
Williams added the initial cost was also proposed even before the county purchased the property. Site preparation for the building site was extensive and an entire valley had to be filled in for the construction work. Those costs were also not included in the initial assessment.
Construction work on the Hoover building is ongoing. However, much of the work on the new Clendenin Elementary School, one of the other school buildings destroyed in the flood of 2016, has been halted. The discovery of pyrite in the soil was an alarm to Williams and construction engineers. The pyrite has a tendency to cause building walls and floors to crack.
Ahead of the work, nobody tested for it on the Kanawha County site because pyrite doesn’t generally occur in our region and even when it does, it’s not often found in shale. However, both of those situations played out to produce pyrite on the site of the new elementary school.
“It was an extremely rare thing to happen, but unfortunately, it happened with this,” Williams said.
It’s likely the pyrite was dumped on the site as crews were moving fill dirt for the school. An outside company has taken samples and is assessing what needs to be done to fix the problem. The fill used at the site may have to be removed and replaced. Williams said they expect a report on the steps to remedy the problem in the coming weeks.