Using the Triad Approach to expedite the acquisition of an Abbott district school site

Abstract

The Triad Approach was field‐tested to determine if characterization objectives could be met for a brownfields property that had been identified as a future elementary school site. The new school is in response to a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling (the Abbott decision) that directed the state of New Jersey to fund school construction in poorer districts to expand physical facilities to relieve overcrowding. The Triad Approach is promoted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as a process that has the potential to improve the timeliness and efficiency of site characterization, and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) recently issued a policy statement supporting its potential. Aggressive school construction deadlines are contingent on property acquisitions that are relatively faster than the traditional investigatory process. In addition, given the future sensitive population, the investigations must be thorough. This case study is among the first studies to document the use of the Triad Approach for a future school site. The Triad Approach was used to define site conditions for six areas of concern in a two‐month time frame (from the start of the planning process to completed investigation). © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Achieving Healthy School Siting and Planning Policies: Understanding Shared Concerns of Environmental Planners, Public Health Professionals, and Educators

“…15 Endorsed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the Triad Approach describes the conditions of the site to help reduce the amount of time it takes to construct a new school, something that has been an explicit goal of the state of New Jersey. 2215 The Triad Approach to brownfields remediation offers a policy solution to a common problem of the brownfields remediation process—that city officials get permits without doing background research about the environmental quality of the site. 19 There are three components of the Triad: strategic planning, dynamic work strategies that allow the project to be completed more rapidly and less expensively, and real-time measurement technologies that make rapid data collect possible.…”

“…1522 The Triad Approach’s emphasis on expedited review and the role of highly specialized professionals in collecting the data circumvents extensive community engagement in the planning process, since meaningful community engagement requires additional time and resources and an emphasis on specialization simultaneously deemphasizes the importance of local knowledge. Triad Approach data may be strong, but it is not disseminated at the community level.…”

“…Brownfields tend to be located in poorer communities and low-income communities of color [12,14]. At the same time, however, poorer districts are more likely to be overcrowded and in need of new schools [15]. Building a school on a brownfield may be the only way in which a school can be proximal to the students it serves [16].…”

“…The Triad Approach is one approach used to identify if a site is suitable for construction. It was used in New Jersey to characterize the environmental quality of a brownfields site that was identified as the potential location of an elementary school that needed to be built to help reduce overcrowding [15]. Endorsed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the Triad Approach describes the conditions of the site to help reduce the amount of time it takes to construct a new school, something that has been an explicit goal of the state of New Jersey [15,22].…”

A data integration framework to support Triad projects

“…Literature on the use of innovative site management strategies, including the Triad approach, is emerging in the form of research, government and standards organization guidance, and case studies (for more information about the Triad approach, see American Society for Testing andMaterials, 1998a, b, 1999;Applegate & Fitton, 1997;Burton et al, 1995;Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, Leaking Underground Storage Tank Program, 2000;Crumbling et al, 2001;Ellerbusch et al, 2004;Mack et al, 2003;Robbat, 1994Robbat, , 1997Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, 1995;US EPA, 1997Woll et al, 2003).…”