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Village of North Palm Beach dealing with water and mold issues in public safety building

Posted at 7:02 PM, Aug 08, 2018
and last updated 2018-08-08 19:02:43-04

A blue tarp covers the North Palm Beach Public Safety building. Steven Hallock, Director of Public Works showed us the restrooms just inside the lobby area. "The damage in this area is all water damage so when we did the mold inspecting and testing it came back negative. But the water damage did occur," he says.

Hallock says a month and a half ago, the building started leaking during a rainstorm. They eventually found mold. "When the mold remediation came in removing drywall, actually used fogging technology fog the entire area to kill the mold. They used air scrubbers which filtered out any mold spores along the way," he says.

The building is shared by the police and fire departments. Ed Cunningham is the communications manager for the Village. He said, "Some insulation and dry wall was removed and people were kept out of that area. It was in the police records area and those people have been moved to another office."

Mold appeared again last week. The Public Works Department is doing daily checks for mold, but say it's time for a new roof." 

Cunningham said, "The next step is Thursday night the Village Council will review this one more time hopefully our final approval to get the contract going and get the roofer out here." 

Hallock added, "Our number one concern is the employees, there's no reason to risk them on something like this."

Discussion about the roof is on Thursday's Agenda. Council members will discuss its approval. Hallock says insurance will cover about half of the cost to replace the roof. The Village will pay for the rest, which is about $300,000.