By Katie Northcott, News Director
At the July 2 meeting of the Coffee County Capital Outlay Committee, County Maintenance Supervisor Rick Soucy said that the Coffee County Manchester Library had passed a “stringent” air quality test ahead of its reopening on July 6.
The library was closed for four months after Library Director Pauline Vaughn brought concerns about mold in the HVAC system before the county’s Capital Outlay Committee in early March.
At the March meeting, Vaughn said the library board decided to spend $2,700 of funds allocated to the library to investigate whether the mold could be the cause of employee health problems. Vaughn said that library employees had started to notice migraines, and one employee even complained of respiratory distress. She said the most affected employee was planning to file for workman’s compensation.
The committee decided in March that it had no choice but to close the library for mold remediation, citing liability concerns.
The remediation process took longer than expected, and the process hit a roadblock when the library failed an air quality test. The library was tested by two third-party companies. The library passed two air quality tests administered by one company before failing the second company’s test. Soucy said the second company had much more “stringent” requirements than the company that originally tested the library.
“This company that failed us, they came in and did not pass us,” Soucy said. “They had much stronger guidelines.”
On June 24, the library was retested by the company that had previously failed it. This time, the library passed the test. Soucy said that the library’s air quality is safe, and the library is ready to reopen.
“I wanted [the library] to be passed by the company that failed us,” Soucy said. “We worked to get that done, passing the test by that company. That way, there’s no doubt that [the library] is ready to go.”
Soucy has maintained throughout the remediation process that the library “is definitely not infested with mold”. In May, he said the remediation was initiated by one “zero-tolerance” spore, quoting a portion of a lab report. The excerpt quoted by Soucy is pasted below:
“The lab shows relatively low levels of spores in the indoor air samples, less than the exterior comparison sample, and well below levels commonly found indoors. … Although there was a relatively low spore count in the interior air samples, a zero-tolerance mold was identified in the main lobby sample.”
Committee Chairman Terry Hershman said he feels good about the library’s reopening.
“We got the company that’s hardest to pass to pass this test,” Hershman said. “I don’t have any problem with the building right now. Our biggest problem with the building right now is we’re going to have to do something with the roof, and that’s got to be done very soon.”
In early April, the county hired a company to repair leaks in the library’s roof that contributed to the mold problem. At the time, Hershman said that the mold remediation as well as the repairs being made to the roof and inside of the library are just a “Band-Aid” on the problem. He said the library will eventually need a new roof as the current roof is suited to a residential building, not a commercial building.
The library officially reopened on July 6.
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