New school progress on schedule

Grand Coulee Dam School District Superintendent Dennis Carlson told his board Monday night that the K-12 school construction venture is back on schedule.

“The elementary side of the project will be enclosed by the end of October, allowing workers to be indoors during the winter,” he said.

Time had been lost early on when excavation survey mistakes were made, placing the schedule at a risk.

The ground floor of the secondary wing was scheduled to be poured Wednesday. Carlson stated that the 1,100-foot-long retaining wall is essentially complete. A portion of it will be finished when the education wing of the present high school is torn down.

Carlson said that the top two rows of man-made blocks are finished on both sides so they will be attractive from every vantage point. All the wall is capped and a six-foot-high chain link fence will be built on top of the wall to keep anyone from falling from it. The wall is 20-feet high at its tallest point.

The blocks of the wall were designed to look like stone and created locally.

Carlson also reported to the board that the problem of insulation blowing from its storage area has been solved. During the recent wind storm some of the sheets of insulation blew into yards in the neighborhood. He said the general contractor, Walker Construction, had been asked to make sure building materials were properly anchored.

Currently, steel work is going up on the high school/middle school side of the project.