Town officials have closed Memorial Hall until early next week, when they expect to receive test results from an air quality sample taken July 10, a week after dust was created when a contractor removed a cement covering on a wall.
The closure means the relocation of a national dance contest, Take Centerstage Dance Challenge, scheduled for this weekend, which will now be held at Plymouth South High School, said Town Manager Derek Brindisi. The next scheduled event is a Graham Nash concert on July 18. Officials expect to have test results by then.
The alleged dust problem first came up at Tuesday’s Select Board meeting, when Dale Webber and Butch Machado, the president and vice president of the union representing Department of Public Works employees, said the contractor left the entire hall coated with what they presumed to be silica dust, a possible byproduct of the cement the wall was made of 100 years ago. Webber said silica is a known carcinogen. People exposed to respirable crystalline silica can develop serious lung disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Brindisi said Thursday that Webber is being reckless by alleging employees were put at risk.
“This was the first time we were made aware of the alleged problem,” he said. “We know that there’s no threat to human health, but because Dale Webber was irresponsible in his public statement about carcinogens and individuals being exposed, we are taking a cautious approach because we want the public to know that the building is safe.”
Brindisi said a town vendor, Katco Contracting, based in Blackstone, was paid $31,000 to remove the badly deteriorating cement covering on the hall’s interior rear wall. The town has a contract with Katco for on-call painting and wall repairs.
The company began work on July 1 and finished on July 5, said Casey Kennedy, the town’s communications coordinator.
Brindisi said that after Webber and Machado complained to the Select Board, he found out that on July 5, the contractor had used a leaf blower on concrete dust kicked up by the demolition. The dust settled on the floor and the seats, he said.
No one was in the building the next day, Brindisi said. Two custodians returned Monday morning, July 7. By then, the dust had had 48 hours to settle and a thin coating was visible on the floor.
“When my men walked in there, they were told just clean the mess,” Webber told the Select Board.
“None of our people were given hazardous outfits to wear,” he told the Independent on Wednesday.
“The town and its administrators really have no respect for the safety or well-being of DPW employees,” Machado said.
One of the custodians used a machine to clean the floor. Brindisi said it applied water to the floor to suppress the dust particles.
“We don’t believe the dust was further aerosolized” when the floor was cleaned, he said.
Because the cleanup was too big a project for Memorial Hall’s custodians, Brindisi said, town officials contracted with Servpro to clean the rest of the building. Servpro evaluated the scope of the work on July 7 and finished the cleanup on July 9. It used specialized vacuum cleaners and wiped down surfaces throughout the building, Brindisi said.
“They vented the HEPA filters outside so any other potential aerosolized particles were evacuated through the HEPA filters,” he said. “The main floor of the building has since been cleaned.”
Brindisi said the Blue Room, a smaller space, was used for events this week, but the doors to that area were closed and it does not have the same heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system as the main hall. There was no visible dust in that space, he said.
“I want folks in our community to rest assured that this building will be opened after we have the test results so that we can say with 100 percent certainty that the air quality is safe,” Brindisi said.
But he remains upset over Webber and Machado’s statements.
They “have created fear in this community, undue fear I should say,” he said. “We can’t risk our residents and visitors thinking that their health is at risk.”
Webber said the union has sent samples of dust to a lab separate from the one the town is using to determine if it was silica. He expects those results next week as well.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.