By Tom Morphet
With a boost of private money, Haines Assisted Living this week started
removing asbestos flooring and siding from the wreckage of a grocery store at Third Avenue
and Dalton Street.
Work by Bethel Services, Inc. started Monday and could be complete as
soon as week’s end, although the contractor has 30 days for the job, said HAL board
chair Jim Studley.
"So far everything’s going pretty good. We’re moving
forward. The project’s kind of gotten on a fast track lately," Studley said,
declining to name the source or the amount of money the non-profit has received.
"We’ve got enough to do the contract."
Gov. Sarah Palin recently vetoed a request to the state for $270,000 to
pay for the job. Asbestos is a fibrous mineral once used in building materials that can
cause lung cancer when inhaled as a dust.
Work will include removing the asbestos as well as the remainder of the
construction debris and a part of the former Food Center grocery store left standing,
Studley said. Even the 50-year-old building’s cement foundation will be removed,
leaving an empty dirt lot.
Local firefighter Roc Ahrens, who has been hired as project manager on
the cleanup, said 95 percent of the materials from the site would be disposed at the
Haines landfill. Materials containing asbestos – including shake siding and tile
floors – will be trucked to an approved disposal site in Anchorage.
Work started Monday, with crews putting up air monitors and removing
siding lying on top of the giant mound of debris at the site. The former grocery store was
demolished in March after its roof caved in and walls bulged, creating fear of imminent
collapse.
Beginning early Tuesday, two workers in protective gear worked in
tandem with an excavator and a water hose provided by the local fire department, wetting
and separating siding from other construction debris. A special solvent was to be used to
dislodge original asbestos tiles that are beneath vinyl flooring that was installed later,
Ahrens said.
The tiles and the glue used to attach them contain asbestos and the
solvent will reduce them to a gel that will be shoveled up, he said. A vacuum will be used
to suck up any crushed asbestos, he said.
The asbestos and most of the debris should be removed in a day or two,
though removing the building’s cement foundation and loading dock may last through
the week.
Mike Ricker, who owns the motel next door to the site, said he’d
be interested in seeing how the cleanup crew would stay within EPA guidelines for the work
if a piece of heavy equipment was crushing asbestos-laden materials, making them
potentially airborne.
But Ricker called the work a positive step, and said he was looking
forward to the end of a moldy smell that’s hung over the site since the building
collapsed. That and signs warning of lung cancer hazard have hurt his business, he said.
"You can smell it from the parking lot. We’ve had a few
(customers) comment on it. They ask and I show them the (newspaper) article (on the
site’s hazard) and they decide to stay or go… Most of them stay because we talk
them blue in the face telling them there’s no danger if there’s been no
disturbance.
"But we’re happy to see it go, especially right before the
bike race," Ricker said. "It’ll be kind of funny to see what the motel
looks like from the other side."
Project manager Ahrens said Bethel Services Inc. is the same company
that removed asbestos from the Lutak Army tank farm several years ago.
Studley emphasized that public contributions to an assisted living
center HAL is building would not be used to pay for the cleanup. With the site clean, work
toward building an assisted living center will start in mid-July, with demolition of a
five-unit apartment owned by HAL that most recently housed Hospice of Haines.
Studley said he’s hoping contractor Dawson Construction would have
the assisted living center framed in by winter.
