Santa Fe Public Schools has to contend with 830 dump trucks full of waste on county-owned property if it wants to move Agua Fría Elementary School to the site.

That decision will cost from about $156,000 to upward of $830,000 to either dispose of the waste or bury it on-site.

"When put in terms of over 800 garbage trucks and the cost associated with it, that's a no-go for me," said school board member Linda Trujillo, whose District 4 includes the Agua Fría school.

The school board got the news last week, when Andrew Parker of the Albuquerque-based R.T. Hicks Consultants firm, which provides environmental and natural resource consulting services, presented the Agua Fría Solid Waste Management Project report at Tuesday evening's meeting. The district paid about $30,000 for the report.

The report states that the waste must be moved from the potential new school site near the Nancy Rodriguez Community Center in Agua Fría village -- or the district must find a new site for the school.

The property in question, owned by the county, was once a neighborhood landfill, though most people involved with the project stop short of calling it a dump.

The company's environmental testing of the property revealed little or no potential for methane, as was previously feared. Parker said the trash seems to be made up of bottles, tin cans, tire residue and ash. Village residents probably dug trenches and then burned their trash there back in the 1970s, he said.

Parker offered the board three options for that land: excavate the site and haul the waste to the landfill; excavate, screen the waste and then haul it to the landfill; or excavate and bury the waste on-site, covering it with native plants.

That last option needs to be approved by the New Mexico Environment Department, which may not OK the move, Parker said.

As the district considers going that route or demolishing and then rebuilding the school on its current site, some Agua Fría educators and supporters are growing impatient with the amount of time that the Board of Education is taking to address the school's needs.

Agua Fría teacher Jennifer Kennedy was one of several speakers who told the board last Tuesday that the decision-making process regarding the school has taken too long.

"Here we are, literally years since this process began, and the situation at Agua Fría feels exactly the same," she said, adding that staff and students are working in portables that are so small students can't leave their seats during class.

The school, which has about 540 students, uses 14 portables.

"I think that there is a feeling that the board is not as interested as we wish that it were about ameliorating this situation," Kennedy said.

Speaking by phone Tuesday, school Principal Suzanne Jacquez Gorman said one word can sum up the school community's mood about the delay: Anxious.

"At the end of last year, we all thought that the project was going to begin in the summer or fall. We believe that the change in the school board contributed to the delay, the board wanting to make sure that all alternatives were looked at."

Trujillo said she has fielded calls from people who want the board to move on the issue. But given the fact that the district poured somewhere between $8 million and $10 million into the school over the past 10 years -- for Band-Aid fixes, as Trujillo and others call them -- she still wants to tread carefully.

"Taxpayers who have paid taxes in order for us to rebuild and update schools are concerned that we've put as much money into Agua Fría as we have over 10 years and now we are looking at completely demolishing it [for a rebuild], and that is also a valid concern," she said.

In the autumn of 2010, Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez said Agua Fría was the worst structural facility in the district. Among other facility challenges, the school has loud cooling systems, a drainage pond that floods the athletic field and classrooms bordering the outdated gym/cafeteria room, which increases the noise level outside those rooms.

The district included a renovation of Agua Fría in its 2009-13 facilities master plan, and in October 2010, the board voted to allocate $11 million for the school in construction funds from a 2009 general obligation bond.

The district's preliminary estimates for demolishing and rebuilding the school at its current site range between $20 million and $25 million. That process could take up to two years.

The new school's preliminary cost is in the $28 million range, with a rough timeline of 18 months. That cost does not include waste disposal.

In 2010, Agua Fría neighbors worked to convince the district to halt the demolition/rebuild if it entailed destroying the original 1935 Works Progress Administration structure on campus, which had housed the lobby and administrative offices. The Historic Preservation Division ruled that this building is not worthy of historic designation.

Villagers also expressed concern on how the remodel would affect their neighboring properties, urging the district to find a new site for the school.

But Trujillo said Monday that she doesn't think the district has many viable options in terms of moving to another site. Santa Fe County was offering the landfill site for free, she emphasized, whereas the district would have to find money to purchase land for a new building site.

"I think we will just move forward with bids on it and rebuilding it on the current site," she said.

Gorman said she hopes the board makes a decision soon: "Our children deserve a new school. That is what they were told they would be given."

At the last board meeting, she told the board that some of her children, thinking that the delay is due to a lack of financing, have offered to raise money for the project to encourage construction.

According to Trujillo, the board will likely discuss and possibly vote on the issue at the next meeting, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Feb. 21.

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.