Crisis at the State Library

In the previous section we presented examples which testify to the last-minuteness of typical abatement practices. The success of this practice depends fundamentally on the state’s ability to identify and address these situations before damage is irreversibly done. This was not the case in the Maine State Library’s battle with asbestos (the library is located on the 2nd floor of the Cultural Building).

The Maine state library was built in 1971. Like most other building projects at the time, asbestos-containing products factored heavily into many aspects of its construction. In particular, it was fireproofed with a popular industrial product called Mono-Kote.³⁰ Library staff had suspected for years that the fireproofing contained asbestos, but had received verbal assurances from BPI officials that this was not true. In 1985, the Library sought to upgrade its 14 year old air-conditioning system.³¹ The Museum Director, Paul Rivard, cautiously hired a private contractor to test the suspect fireproofing in case the renovation would have created an asbestos hazard.³² The tests came back by November of that year and affirmed the workers’ fear, estimating a 5% concentration of asbestos in the fireproofing.

This revelation was especially distressing because there had been a long history of library staff finding chunks of ceiling debris falling onto shelves and sometimes books. This condition, staff speculated, was the result of water leakage which originated from the faulty construction of the Cultural Building’s roof. Rivard and Gary Nichols, the state librarian, promptly sent a memo to Leighton Cooney, the director of BPI, demanding “(a) further more comprehensive professional samping be conducted of the sprayed-on fireproofing materials. (b) air sampling should be conducted throughout the building in both public and staff areas to determine health and safety risks.”

More laboratory analysis of the fireproofing confused the situation: a public health laboratory determined that the fireproofing contained less than 1% asbestos, a legally negligible amount; but a third opinion from Shelburne Laboratories, a private Vermont lab, found a 12-15% concentration. Ultimately, a direct correspondence with the company which produced the Mono-Kote determined its asbestos content definitively as 15%.

Nichols communicated his concern about asbestos-containing ceiling debris in mid-March of 1985. By this point he and Rivard had been requesting air testing for four months. A return memo from Lyon claimed that “considerable air testing throughout the building has shown no levels of airborne asbestos which violate state and federal law,” but remarkably no one in the library was aware of this or could find any record of such a thing. Emerson, the director of Shelburne laboratories, toured the facility on April 2nd and on April 18th wrote a letter to BPI director Cooney, which read:

“The large amount of asbestos in the building, its poor condition, the extent of water damage, the presence of friable asbestos in air plenums, the open interior layout of the building and the widespread use of the facility by staff and the general public lead inescapably to the conclusion that the building be shut down immediately and that a competent asbestos contractor be retained for emergency clean-up and abatement work.”³³

According to Emerson, he had verbally delivered the contents of this recommendation to BPI already on April 2nd, though BPI denied this. So when the staff of the Cultural Building was told on the morning of April 23rd that they had to pack up and leave, it came as a complete shock. That afternoon, more than 80 employees attended a meeting in which they were informed by BPI officials that the 1st and 2nd floors of the building would be closed until Labor Day for a one million dollar ‘remove- and-repair job.’

This closure would have been bad enough already, but in reality the library would remain closed until September 28th, 1987,³⁴ more than a year longer than BPI anticipated at that time. During that period, the vast majority of the library’s resources were totally inaccessible to the citizens of Maine. Some of the library’s collection was also irrevocably damaged by asbestos and subsequent abatement activity.³⁵

More than just the public and the Cultural Building’s staff, the state suffered immensely from the library’s ordeal. In January of 1987 it was reported³⁶ that already more than $3,000,000 had been spent on the renovation and that BPI was requesting another $1,200,000 from the state in order to finish the job. Of this, more than
$1,400,000 had gone to abatement and inspection expenses. By contrast, the roof renovation and canopy construction job — which would have protected the library from the water damage which was causing the building’s asbestos to become an urgent health risk — would have cost an estimated $1,666,000.³⁷

When the library closed in 1986, it was because BPI had neglected the condition of the Cultural Building’s roof for years and had dismissed the asbestos concerns of the building’s staff for long enough that the building became an occupational hazard.

Improved communication and trust between state employees and BPI would have solved the problem before it spiraled out of control. Ultimately, the abatement project became so expensive that the roof and canopy project took a backseat, and the library continued to struggle with water damage in the coming decades. This has been especially problematic because, even after this massive abatement project, systematic records of the Cultural Building’s remaining asbestos have not been kept, and the building has continued to experience serious problems with asbestos up to the present day.

³⁰ The Al Zimba company did the fireproofing, and the DAFS had documents from 1971 with numerous mentions of using Mono-Kote in the building.

³¹ Datz, Bob. Kennebec Journal, “Asbestos and the State — Air Testing Goes Unanswered for Months“, April, 1986

³² Since then, MEDEP has created policy under which such a renovation would legally require an asbestos inspection.

³³ Maine Stater, “Asbestos Closes State Cultural Building,” May 5, 1986.

³⁴ Hale, John. Bangor Daily News. “State Library Reopens Asbestos-Free,” September 29, 1987.

³⁵ Toole, John. Kennebec Journal. “Library Woes — bungling or misfortune?” January 27, 1987.

³⁶ Toole, John. Kennebec Journal. “Library’s Problems Intensify. Reopening Date Uncertain: Job Requires Another $1.2M,” January 22, 1987.

³⁷ Nichols, Gary. Independently published. “Fact Sheet — Asbestos Removal and Leaks,” February 2, 1987.