Iowa school allowed workers amid asbestos contamination

A Northeast Iowa school district allowed some of its employees and other workers to be inside an asbestos-contaminated building despite a warning from state regulators to vacate it, according to state records.

That has resulted in significant fines for the North Linn Community School District, which undertook an expansive renovation in 2022 of its middle and high school complex near Coggon.

The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined the district $70,000. The Gazette reported earlier that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources also had fined the fined the district $6,000 over the incident.

“Employees were potentially exposed to asbestos fibers in the air when performing daily tasks,” according to Iowa OSHA documents obtained by the Iowa Capital Dispatch.

The contamination resulted from a multimillion-dollar renovation of the buildings that included the addition of air conditioning. It happened in August 2022, when a worker who was prepping a floor for new carpet used a floor buffer to scrape old glue that remained from a previous carpet installation.

Months before, the underlying vinyl tile had been identified by workers as potentially containing asbestos, a fibrous material that can become airborne and inhaled by people. Asbestos fibers can become lodged in people’s lungs and can cause irritation, scarring and cancer. The state has strict rules about its handling and disposal.

Rather than remove the asbestos-containing tiling at considerable expense, the district opted to leave them untouched, according to Iowa OSHA records. It’s unclear why the worker used the buffer on the tiles but after the work began, another worker noted the potential for contamination. Someone alerted the Iowa DNR, which recommended that the building be vacated.

That didn’t happen, Iowa OSHA records show.

Instead, at least 10 renovation workers signed a waiver of liability to continue to work that said: “I understand the Iowa Department of Natural Resources is recommending I do not work in this area due to the possibility of contaminated air with asbestos fibers. I am choosing to disregard the recommendation and continue working,” according to an Iowa DNR order.

“DNR also believed there to be at least 10 more people in the building that had not signed the waivers, and it is unclear if they were aware of the asbestos issue,” the order said.

Dave Hoeger, who was superintendent of the school district at the time and was told to clear the building of people, declined to comment for this article because he is no longer with the district. He is now superintendent of the Maquoketa Valley and Edgewood-Colesburg school districts.

Initial testing showed significant asbestos contamination in the area of the disturbed tiles, and those who continued to work were away from the area. However, subsequent tests revealed widespread contamination in many other rooms.

About 20 school employees might have been exposed to asbestos, Iowa OSHA noted, but the department concluded that the exposure was “limited.”

Iowa DNR asbestos investigators went to the building the day after the contamination was reported and again recommended to evacuate and lock the building, which Hoeger then did. The school district hired a company to clean the building of asbestos, and classes commenced about two weeks later.

Two companies that did the renovation work — Tricon General Construction of Dubuque and SitelogIQ of Minneapolis — each were initially fined by Iowa OSHA for about $99,000. They appealed and paid $10,000 apiece, according to records.

SitelogIQ was also fined $6,000 by the Iowa DNR, and Tricon was fined $3,000.

The school district was initially fined about $87,000 by Iowa OSHA but later agreed to pay $70,000, which it did in December 2022. In its agreement with the Iowa DNR to pay a $6,000 fine and comply with asbestos rules in the future, the district did not admit fault and denied that it had “any responsibility or obligations relating to the renovations project relative to the alleged violations.”

North Linn announced it had hired a new superintendent about two months later.

There are no pending lawsuits against the school district that are tied to the potential asbestos exposures, according to court records.

This article first appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch.