Park City School District silent as state moves toward penalties over 518,000 gallons of contaminated discharge

Hogan & Associates Construction now has until Oct. 16 to respond to state findings of illegal groundwater discharges. Meanwhile, the school district and its attorney have not responded to questions about conflicting public statements.

PARK CITY, Utah — The contractor responsible for discharging more than 518,000 gallons of contaminated groundwater from the Treasure Mountain Junior High School construction site without required permits has received additional time to respond to state regulators, who say the case could be resolved through a negotiated settlement or court action.

Hogan & Associates Construction did not appeal the Utah Division of Water Quality’s Sept. 2 Notice of Violation and Compliance Order but requested an extension to respond to it. The state granted the request, setting a new deadline of Oct. 16, DEQ spokesman Dave Noriega told TownLift.

The notice identifies Hogan as the project operator and Park City School District (PCSD) as the site owner. A thorough state investigation found that Hogan violated state water-quality law by discharging pollutants without the required permit in October 2025 during the construction of a new athletic campus.

Under Utah law, the Division of Water Quality can ask a judge to impose penalties by filing a complaint in court. It can also negotiate a settlement outside court, which DEQ spokesman Dave Noriega said can save time and money. Such settlements may require corrective action and include monetary penalties. Before a settlement is finalized, it must be made public for 30 days.

The incident goes back to last October when the school district’s former environmental consultant R&R Environmental, notified Hogan, PCSD and various representatives of the EPA and Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality via email of a discovered “illicit” water discharge from the project site into Silver Creek.

“As stated in writing at the beginning of this project, this type of discharge is not allowable. Upon further investigation, we identified that there has been a water discharge that went unseen since almost the start of the project. We have identified that the pumps have been pumping since near the beginning of the project and are turned on at approximately 8:00 a.m. and shutoff at approximately 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The pump is rated at 40 gallons per minute. All groundwater must be captured, held onsite, and properly characterized prior to discharge…It is the creek sediment that will be the bigger issue based on metal fall rates in the surface water,” the email stated.

PCSD provided TownLift with water samples taken from the site on Aug. 15, weeks before the contractor started discharging water. Those tests showed the groundwater contained high levels of arsenic and lead.

An email obtained by TownLift through a records request, written by DEQ environmental scientist Lyndsey Shafer, said the Aug. 15 groundwater tests “demonstrate arsenic and lead contamination” and “would not be an allowable discharge covered under the Construction Dewatering Hydrostatic Testing Permit.”

A district environmental overview, sent to the community in December 2025, took a different position.

It said testing classified the groundwater as “non-hazardous,” meaning it did not require “specialized containment or treatment for disposal,” and that the contractor and consultant interpreted the district-owned storm line as where they could discharge without a state-issued permit. The overview concluded the water’s levels and the private nature of a storm system used to dump the contaminated water suggested a permit “may not have been required initially.”

The order says violations can carry civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day.

The state documented discharges over 17 days between Sept. 9 and Oct. 8, 2025, but also found evidence of additional discharges beyond that period and ordered Hogan to account for all discharges since the project began.

District won’t explain conflicting statements

While the Park City School District is staffed with a full time communications manager with a total compensation package of $180,000 per year, according to Transparent Utah, the district has not responded to TownLift’s request for comment on the situation for months.

Joan Andrews of Fabian VanCott has served as the district’s retained counsel for well over a decade. She did not respond to questions about the district’s public statements concerning the groundwater discharges or who drafted and approved them.

The largest discrepancies between the district’s environmental overview and the state’s Sept. 2 Notice of Violation are the district’s suggestion that a permit might not have been necessary, its claim that discharge stopped immediately, and its description of the incident as a brief direct-to-creek event that happened on a single day. DEQ’s order establishes that Hogan made unpermitted discharges over 17 days and continued discharging after Oct. 10.

Park City School District Business Administrator Randy Upton in a December meeting with TownLift said the district’s aim is to be accountable and transparent.

“We’ve tried really, really hard to be as transparent, to communicate. This is the education system in Park City, and we’re being as honest and forthright as we can,” Upton said.

The discrepancies raise questions about the district’s role in overseeing the project and how it communicated to taxpayers about the discharges.

In December, Superintendent Lyndsay Huntsman told TownLift that the district’s environmental overview had been developed by the district, its attorneys and contractors. TownLift asked Andrews whether she or her firm drafted, edited or approved the overview. TownLift also asked whether the district stands by those communications following DEQ’s findings and what steps it will take if it does not.

Park City School District is Summit County’s largest taxing entity, receiving roughly 70% of property tax revenue in its taxing area. Its 2026-27 budget totals nearly $246 million.