Manteca Unified is in the process of buying 8.76 acres to expand the Nile School campus.

The board Thursday authorized the $1,489,000 purchase of the Agdoma property using capital outlay funds. The property borders the Lathrop Manteca Fire District station site.

Typically, elementary school sites are 20 acres.

The current Nile Garden campus has 15.809 acres.

The current program capacity for Nile Garden is 1,266.

The enrollment at Nile Garden as of Tuesday is 1,174.

The campus is on Nile Road just west of Airport Way.

Nile Garden is near three other parcels the district purchased two decades ago.
They are:

*The 56 acre Tinnin Road parcel to the northeast on Tinnin Road.

*The Rustic parcel east of Airport Way roughly midway between Woodward Avenue and Nile Road.

*The Tara parcel west of Airport Way and to the northwest of the intersection of Woodward Avenue and the new McKinley Avenue alignment.

The Tinnin property is outside of the state-designated 200-year floodplain.

Tara is 100 percent in the floodplain while part of Rustic is in the floodplain.

The Rustic and Tara sites, when they were purchased, flood protection was required for only 100-year floods.

Then after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 overwhelmed levees protecting New Orleans, California imposed a law that levee protection had to be extended to 200-year events instead of 100-year events.

It also banned the building of new structures — or adding to existing ones — within such 200-year floodplains after 2030 if work wasn’t in progress to upgrade levees.

The 100-year and 200-year monikers are a bit misdealing. What they do is designate the odds of a certain level of flooding happening in any given year.

When MUSD passed a bond more than 20 years to help build Lathrop High, it ended up eating almost the entire $60 million issue because the state decided to require public schools to be built out of the floodplain which meant bringing in dirt to raise the campus 5 feet. That was an extremely costly endeavor.

It is not clear whether that will apply to the 200-year floodplain as well after $280 million in planned levee upgrades are completed.

Nile Garden is just outside the floodplain. The property the district is buying adjacent to Nile Garden is also outside the floodplain.

At one point during the 1997 floods that inundated 70 square miles between Manteca and Tracy, Nile Garden was used as the emergency command center.

The reason why the floodplain is important is the fact the state requires schools built in floodplains to be raised out of them

Part of Tinnin is where the MUSD is moving forward with plans to build an early education center.

When finished, it will house all kindergarten and transitional kindergarten students south of the 120 Bypass.

Current kindergarten space at Veritas, Woodward, and Nile Garden would be repurposed for first through eighth grade use. That would effectively increase capacity at those schools.

It should be noted buying land adjacent to Nile Garden is significantly less than buying it within the city where it has a higher value due to its worth to build tract homes.

The district recently spent $16.1 million in Measure G bond proceeds to build a new multiple purpose room, add classrooms, and make other improvements at the campus that has been helping absorb growth south of the 120 Bypass.

Roughly 90 percent of Nile Garden’s student body resides in Manteca proper.

A $6.3 million project is underway to install pipelines to supply Nile Garden with City of Manteca drinking water.

Nile Garden School students and staff since 2014 have been supplied with bottled water.

It’s because the water well that serves the rural south Manteca campus had repeatedly violated the maximum contaminant levels for both arsenic and 1,2,3-trichloropropane.

A well is being  developed on the southeastern side of Charles Palmer Park on Sephos Street as well as extend a transmission line to the school.

The State Water Resources Control Board has agreed to reimburse Manteca for the project from the Safe and Affordable Drinking Act bond proceeds.

The new well will include an arsenic treatment system.

The effort includes 6,500 feet — or roughly 1.2 miles — of a 4-inch pipeline.

Nile Garden started using bottled water when tests showed that the water being pumped from a well no longer met newer federal standards for arsenic.

The previous standard was 50 parts per billion in terms of volume. It was reduced to 10 parts per billion.

Arsenic occurs naturally. Experts have said it would take arsenic levels “about 100 times” higher than what they are now to cause sickness.

The EPA edict has been described by some experts as being “extreme” caution.

The existing well at Nile Garden will continue to be used for irrigation to avoid using much more expensive treated city water for that purpose.

To contract Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com