ST. CROIX — The prime contractor at the construction site for the new Arthur A. Richards PreK-8 School in Estate Mount Pleasant is amenable to pleas from two neighbors who live next to the site to spray their dirt-covered road more often with water to control the dust that gets stirred up by passing garbage trucks hauling excavated caliche.
MCN Build, a top school builder in the nation, is on track to complete the construction of the new school on budget and on schedule for July 2026 with help from more than a dozen local subcontractors. MCN Build said it is mindful that dust blowing in the wind has a negative impact on the nearby community.
“Any construction project is going to have dust,” Reza Mir, MCN Build senior project manager, said. “The plan is how to mitigate, control, and monitor that dust to ensure that you are going to have the least amount of inconvenience for the community.”
While dust mitigation efforts are happening within the perimeter of the construction site, two residents who live near the site are pleading with the contractor to routinely wet their road to control blowing dust that constantly infiltrates their homes when the garbage trucks drive past their houses and stir up dirt covering the paved road.
Nina Barnes, who lives in the last house on her block next to the construction site with her two children, said the dust is so bad inside her home she cannot keep it clean.
“I sweep my floor more than five times a day, and you will not believe it, the amount of dust that you will see flying up there,” she said.
Barnes said she has been experiencing severe health issues she attributes to the dust that penetrates through her windows despite keeping them closed. She said she has been dealing with dizziness, nausea, headaches, chest tightness, a lingering cold, and a persistent cough.
“I’ve been going to the emergency room to check out myself, to the clinic to check out myself,” she said. “Nothing seems to be really wrong with me, but I’m still going through a lot of visits because I have the same headache from breathing in that dust in my home and that sort of scared me the most.”
Another resident who lives next door to Barnes said she cannot keep the dust out of her home. She said the contractor has not been wetting the road, adding that she cannot sit on her porch when the large trucks drive by because they stir up too much dust.
“There’s a lot of dust,” she said. “I have to wash my windows very often. I just hope they could water the road at least early in the morning, but they are not doing that.”
Mir said that MCN Build tries to spray the road with water when there are significant dust issues.
“Sometimes the dust is not coming from our job site,” he said. “It might be the trucks and the cars driving on the street.”
Mir said the community is important to MCN Build, expressing sympathy toward the residents affected by dust. The road was routinely sprayed with water last week, something Mir said the contractor plans to do more often in response to the pleas from the neighbors.
“We will do our best to monitor that and make sure that we have the least impact possible disturbance for the community, for sure, and that was our plan from day one,” he said.
Barnes, who said her road has not been getting sprayed with water, said she was surprised to see the wet road last week.
“They don’t normally do that,” she said, adding that she was “grateful.”
Barnes, who received three air filters from the contractor to place in her house, suggested her road needs to be sprayed with water more often.
“If they had done this daily, it would have saved a lot of headaches, it would have saved a lot of stress,” she said.
Barnes said the passing trucks that stir up the dirt on the paved road are not the only reason dust is infiltrating her home. She pointed out her yard is next door to the construction site, where a mound of dirt is piled up near her backyard.
“It’s not just the trucks dem,” she said. “I have this site I’m dealing with also. So, I have the trucks dem in the front, passing in front the house faithfully every day, and then I’m just one feet away from what’s going on right here next to me. I’m touching the fence right here. The mountain of dust is facing my kitchen.”
Barnes said she reached out to St. Croix Administrator Sammuel Sanes to see if he could assist in getting the contractor to control the dust.
Sanes said he has received complaints from residents in the area. He said he reached out to the building manager at the construction site and learned the contractor has attempted to address the concern.
“They have tried to wet down the area and put up some type of barriers,” Sanes said. “I do understand what the residents are going through. There is a lot of dust, there is a lot of construction in that area, and with it having such dry weather, of course, it creates even more opportunity for more dust to unfortunately affect them.”
Craig Benjamin, Bureau of School Construction and Maintenance executive director, said the contractor has a dust mitigation plan. He said a disaster recovery project manager from his bureau is on the ground at the construction site to monitor the work.
“He is there on site making sure that everything is in compliance,” Benjamin said.
The contractor follows a dust mitigation plan that includes hosing off the tires of the garbage trucks as they traverse across rocks and mats designed to remove dirt from the tires upon exiting the site.
The contractor’s dust mitigation efforts also include planting greenery on dirt stockpiles to prevent the wind from blowing dust off the mounds, spraying water on the ground when excavating caliche at the construction site, and misting the air to prevent dust particles from spreading.
Air monitor devices have been installed around the construction site to indicate when a significant amount of dust is blowing in the wind. When the monitors alert excessive amounts of dust, the contractor brings in a water truck to spray the area.
“We go around spraying water whenever it gets really dry,” Rudy Seikaly, MCN Build co-founder and CEO, said.
