Metro-Dade Mayor Steve Clark and Solid Waste Management Director Ben Guilford are the latest county officials to express concern over the proximity of toxic incinerators to a proposed school site in the Doral Park area.

Environmentalists opposed to the "sick school site" -- it's within blocks of two incinerators and a landfill -- are scheduled to bring their concerns to a public hearing at 4 p.m. Wednesday, at 1450 NE Second Ave., after the regular School Board meeting. They dispute the latest study commissioned by the School Board, which says air quality in the area does not pose a health threat to children.

In a Dec. 3 letter to School Board Chairwoman Janet McAliley, Clark expressed his "considerable concern" that if student health problems developed after the school was built, the School Board would be at fault.

"I very much appreciate the expressed desire of some residents in that area to enjoy the convenience of a neighborhood school," wrote Clark. "However, I am very apprehensive about the possibility of future conflict."

Guilford wrote on Nov. 16 to Superintendent Octavio Visiedo that Solid Waste Management was still responding to odor complaints about its incinerator at 6990 NW 97th Ave. He also noted that the department was considering expanding the facility, and that resident’s currently in favor of the school might someday regret building it.

Doral residents went before the School Board in October 1991 to ask that a school be built in their area, reviving a proposal that died two years prior because of concerns about air pollution.

The School Board agrees a school is needed but hasn't decided where to put it.

Many parents and members of the West Dade Federation of Homeowners still favor construction of the school, planned to go up on either of two adjacent sites on a 10-acre lot on Northwest 52nd Street between 104th and 102nd Avenues. The land was donated by Lennar Homes and Doral Properties.

"We do think it's a good place for a school, and we feel it's very desired and very needed," said Jon Jaffe, president, South Florida region of Lennar Homes.

The Metro-Dade garbage incinerator across the street is tentatively scheduled for a 50 percent expansion.

One mile east of the plant, at Northwest 58th Street and 87th Avenue, lays MedX, Florida's largest medical waste incinerator. And an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund landfill site sits at the corner of Northwest 58th Street and 97th Avenue.

Environmentalist Edmund Benson, founder of the grass-roots Arise Foundation, has argued that the incinerators, landfills and high-volume garbage truck traffic in the area would so pollute the air that children could suffer asthma and other respiratory ailments and develop learning disabilities from the lead, mercury and carcinogens in the air.

"Of course kids need a school, but not at a sick school site," Benson said. He referred to the area as a "horrible collection of environmental problems that even a mad scientist couldn't come up with."

McAliley said Friday that Clark's and Guilford's letters now make her question whether it is still a good idea to build the school. She said she no longer trusts the pollution study.

"The letters we've gotten recently and the awareness of the plan now to double the incinerator are making me wonder whether it's a good site," said McAliley. "I have big question marks about it."

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