Raw Sewage at the Library

If you or your children use the North Plainfield Memorial Library, be aware that there have been several incidents of flooding due to plumbing problems in the past year, which have filled ceiling tiles in the Children’s Room with raw sewage and have caused sewer gases to erupt from floor traps in the bathrooms.

Thus far, the library and town officials have responded by calling the problems “overflowed toilet” and having the messes cleaned up by library staff and regular cleaning services, occasionally calling in the town Department of Public Works to replace the ceiling tiles.

These measures are not sufficient to correct ongoing plumbing, sewage and mold problems throughout the building and HVAC system, as evidenced by the fact that incidents continue to occur and librarians continue to suffer from related health problems.

I’ve been told that officials are now taking preliminary steps toward having the sewer lines checked, but the library remains open, has not (to my knowledge) been inspected by health officials to assess the safety of the air quality, and library staff and patrons continue to use the building under these potentially unsafe conditions.

Following is a letter I sent to local, library and state PEOSH officials yesterday and read into the record at last night’s Council meeting, followed by another letter sent today. Get involved if you’re interested.

LETTER ONE:

September 10, 2007

TO: North Plainfield Mayor Janice Allen; Members of the North Plainfield Borough Council
North Plainfield Borough Attorney Eric Bernstein; Somerset County Library System Director James M. Hecht; NJ PEOSH Program Manager Eric Beckhusen; North Plainfield Board of Health

FROM: KW

RE: Raw Human Sewage

1) By agreement, the Borough of North Plainfield is responsible for maintenance and repairs to buildings used by the Somerset County Library System for providing public library services and materials to Somerset County residents.

2) Needed maintenance and repairs – including repairs to mitigate mold problems in the HVAC system and plumbing problems in the sewage system – for the North Plainfield Memorial Library building, located at 6 Rockview Avenue, have been included in annual capital budget requests and approved by the Borough Council for the past several years.

3) The needed maintenance and repairs have not been performed.

4) On Friday, September 7, and Saturday, September 8, 2007, for at least the third and fourth times in the last year, ceiling tiles in the downstairs Children’s Room filled with raw sewage from the upstairs bathrooms, dumping raw sewage down onto the computers, carpeting, and bookshelves of the Children’s Room.

5) Somerset County Library System directors did not act quickly to evacuate both staff and patrons and close the library.

6) The Borough of North Plainfield did not act quickly to begin professional assessment of the safety and health risks to humans exposed to the raw sewage, to begin professional, hazardous-materials certified cleaning of the building, furnishings and materials, or to authorize and supervise removal and replacement of the damaged pipes, plumbing fixtures, sewer lines, ceiling tiles and other contaminated building components.

7) These failures may render both the Borough of North Plainfield and the Somerset County Library System liable for medical problems suffered, past, present and future, by staff and patrons regularly exposed to the airborne, waterborne and solid pathogens in the sewage and mold that have been circulating throughout the building for the past several years, including but not limited to breathing problems, sinus and respiratory disorders including bronchitis and pneumonia, headaches, nausea, dizziness and disorientation.

As a library patron and mother of two young children who also use the library, I demand the following:

Immediate closure of the North Plainfield Memorial Library for EMERGENCY REPAIRS and temporary reassignment of all library staff to other Somerset County library branches during construction;

Immediate authorization and direct supervision of contractors, by the Borough of North Plainfield, to begin immediate and COMPLETE repairs to the interior plumbing system, interior HVAC system and the sewage line from the building to the municipal sewage system, to correct the mold and sewage problems;

Daily written status reports on progress meeting these two demands.

9) If I am not satisfied that adequate progress is being made toward protecting the health and safety of library staff and patrons within one week, I will file an individual lawsuit against both the Borough of North Plainfield and the Somerset County Library System to protect the health and safety of patrons and staff. I will work with other patrons to generate additional individual lawsuits, and take other steps to correct the health and safety problems.

10) In the meantime, I will gather evidence to support these claims, including photographs of the mold and sewage problems; sworn statements from library staff and patrons; Borough of North Plainfield capital budget requests and allocations for the last five years; PEOSH and OSHA reports on health and safety conditions at the North Plainfield Memorial Library conducted during the last five years; independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies on proven and suspected health effects of brief and prolonged exposure to airborne, waterborne and solid pathogens found in raw human sewage; and other relevant materials. I will be guided by the standards outlined at the Public Employees Occupational Safety and Health Program website (http://www.state.nj.us/health/eoh/peoshweb/) and will encourage all library staff – all of whom have discussed these problems with me over the last year, and many of whom are currently being intimidated into silence due to their responsible superiors’ concerns about “bad publicity” – to file individual written complaints through both the NJ Department of Labor and the NJ Department of Health and Senior Services.

11) A child killed by pathogens from human fecal waste is not going to be good PR either, so pick your poison. You missed your chance to prevent a bad outcome, the best you can do now is damage control. THE BEST WAY TO COVER YOUR ASSES IS TO DO YOUR JOBS.

LETTER TWO

Borough Council/Board of Health Members, Mr. Hecht, Mr. Stevens, and Mr. Beckhusen:

1) Since the Borough Council is also the Board of Health, the appropriate local authorities have now been notified of the problems at the library. I don’t know if any Council members were aware of the problems prior to my letter of yesterday. I don’t know if any library staff have ever filed formal complaints against their employer – the Somerset County Library System – with the NJ PEOSH program for health problems related to indoor air quality in their workplace. If not, as of my letter of yesterday and my reading of it on the public record at last night’s Council meeting, a paper trail has been started and plausible deniability is over.

2) I understand, from speaking to [a reporter] at the Star-Ledger, that Somerset County Library officials have called the weekend incident an “overflowed toilet.” If you are choosing to play this incident down while you fully address it, fine.

However, the combined record of the library and town officials on solving this particular problem – severe plumbing ruptures, flooding, and HVAC mold causing poor indoor air quality and compromising the health of staff and patrons over the past several years – is absolutely disgraceful.

Therefore, until I have documented evidence that the proper remedial steps are now being taken, I can and will assume you are still trying to cover up what’s happening in that library, avoid responsibility, and delay proper remedial action, and I will make my decisions about my steps in the next few days and weeks based on that assumption. You know how to reach me with written status reports if you’d like me to plan my moves based on a more favorable view of your current activity.

3) Your interests in this whole matter, clearly, are to avoid negative publicity that will reflect poorly on your leadership abilities. My interest is in pressuring the right people – those with authority, responsibility and financial resources (taxpayer dollars) – to fully protect the safety and health of library staff and patrons. The press is interested in presenting interesting, relevant, accurate stories to the public.

I’ll repeat: The best way for town and library officials to minimize negative publicity is to acknowledge the severity of the problems, fix the problems fully, and make frequent reports on your remedial actions to prove to the public that you are doing so.

So far, it’s my understanding that library officials have placed significant pressures on library staff to remain silent about what has been occurring at the library.

I’ll repeat: my information has come from more than a year of listening to virtually all the librarians discuss these issues, attending meetings and obtaining public records related to the Borough Council’s spring and summer capital budget hearings, Internet research, experience with mold remediation at other institutions open to the public, and, above all, common sense. If you plan to retaliate against and/or fire any librarian for speaking freely, in any context, about dangerous conditions in the library and a lack of responsiveness from those charged with protecting their health and safety in the workplace, I hope you are prepared to fire all of them and explain that mass firing to the public in light of this occupational health and safety situation.

4) I have located the relevant law being broken by those responsible for maintaining the air quality in the North Plainfield Memorial Library. N.J.A.C. 12:100-13.1 may be found in Appendix A of this PEOSH link.

My next steps will be to match up the requirements of the law with the procedures actually used over the past several years in the North Plainfield library situation, by way of Freedom of Information Act requests, Open Public Records Act requests, and other investigation.

Best wishes with your remedial efforts. Please feel free to forward this summary as you see fit.