Challenge
Survival was the issue when a very exclusive private school discovered potentially carcinogenic materials invaded their campus from underground wastes buried 50 years earlier by previous property owners.

School officials were deeply concerned that misinformation could set off a panic that would decimate enrollment. Highly visible environmental mitigation work, including drilling and restricting access to certain areas, made it imperative that parents, students, teachers and other staff were informed of the situation in a way that made them confident they were safe and that the problem would be eliminated.

Solution
We worked closely with the school’s law firm and technical experts to develop and implement a series of communications, meetings, and other outreach activities explaining the facts and putting to rest a variety of concerns raised by concerned parents.

Result
The mitigation program was successfully completed and the school lost not a single student throughout the entire process. Not a word of this potentially explosive situation ever appeared in any media.