Date: Fri 03-Jan-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: DOTTIE

Quick Words:

schools-dirt-pile-Posca

Full Text:

with cut: More Than Dirt Cheap: Topsoil Hill Is Worth Money

B Y D OROTHY E VANS

You can't miss seeing it.

Every time you drive past Newtown High School on Berkshire Road, there it is

rising nearby the new addition construction site like landscape design gone

berserk.

It greets students and staff members as they turn into the school entrance

driveway and, although a healthy crop of green grass has already taken root,

it's not exactly what you might call attractive.

But it's more than a worthless mound of dirt.

In fact, Building and Grounds Supervisor Dom Posca calls it "pure gold," a

valuable hill of topsoil and the by-product of construction and excavation at

both Hawley School and the high school.

"When the contractor at Hawley couldn't use all the topsoil from that site, he

asked if I wanted it. I said `definitely' and trucked it over here. It's not

going to leave the site, I can promise you," Mr Posca added.

Not that gold is actually buried there, but if that dirt were to be sold,

money would be earned, Mr Posca said.

"Screened loam is getting $26 a cubic yard and there must be 1,000 yards of

material there," he added.

Mr Posca is stockpiling it, he says, for use at the site when construction is

through - and for landscape restoration.

Whatever isn't used, Mr Posca added, would be trucked off and added to another

topsoil pile he's holding down by the fields.

"Believe me, I don't let that stuff go!"