Due to its unsafe location, Zeballos Elementary Secondary school will soon be relocated to a new site.
Although the current building is structurally sound, the school is located in a potential rock slide area.
“Relocating to the new site will ensure students’ safety and maintain the school as a vital part of the Zeballos community,” said B.C.’s minister of education, George Abbott.
“The provincial government has allocated more than $6 million to the development project, and the plan was apparently well received by everyone in town,” said Zeballos town council member Jeff Coburn.
However, due to limited property availability the new site will be built on a flood plain, which carries risks of its own.
Yet the new site is judged to be safer than the current one, and community developers are essentially caught “between a rock and a hard place,” said Coburn.
Construction is scheduled to begin in Winter 2012 and is expected to open in early 2013.