School hung up on preservation issues again

State archaeologists call for survey on Dingman building site Dingman — School officials admitted last week that they didn’t get away from archaeological issues when they got away from the Santos Farm property purchase. The Delaware Valley Board of Education announced April 19 that the district has issued a $32,720 contract for a new archaeological study for possible sites on the 300-plus acre, Marquin Property opposite the Dingman-Delaware campus in Dingman Township. The study becomes another portion of the paperwork required before the land purchase, authorized by the district last summer, can be finalized. To complicate issues, elements in the purchase contract will only allow a month-long window to complete the required work. “I’ve got concerns about the treatment we’re getting from Harrisburg,” board member Ed Silverstone said as he questioned the contract. Silverstone was talking about inquiries made by the district after officials learned that the state’s Bureau of Historic Preservation would require a field examination. In a March e-mail exchange, Business Administrator Bill Hessling asked the state agency to provide some documentation that would justify their interest. Indexed map references were produced earlier to identify significant sites on the Santos Farm property where officials hoped to build a new elementary school. The district backed out of the $7 million Santos deal, after learning of the identified sites on the Milford Township property. But the only documentation Hessling received was the cultural resource notice form filed by the district’s engineer, Michael Weeks, in January. “I’d like someone to address this. A homeowner looking to site house would not have gotten this. I don’t that $32,000 is all there is to this,” Silverstone said. Board President John Wroblewski agreed. “I don’t think there is any place in Pike County where you can’t find an arrowhead,” Wroblewski said. State archaeologist Steven McDougal said there is no intent to take advantage of the district and that more than guesswork was involved. He said “predictive models” for various regions of the state are produced by the agency. Those models are used to select the places where studies will be required. “While much of the property is wetland or swamp, there are also elevations where we have exact matches from our models for classic locations where hunting or gathering camps could have been located.” The bureau reviews from 7,000 to 8,000 projects annually, some 4,000 of those for new construction, McDougal said. “We don’t give high probability rankings very often. About three-quarters of the time we don’t call for a survey,” he added.